I recently wrote a piece directed at marketers reminding them that it is important to keep their IT folks in the loop all the time. This is important so they can get the best advice, counsel and work the IT folks can offer. It’s a topic I talk and write about quite often.

As is usually the case, there is another side to the coin. The IT folks have to be willing to communicate as well.

As in any relationship, the one between Marketing and IT is a two-way street. Each side has to be willing to work with the other and offer the best they have to the relationship. Each side has abilities and strengths the other lacks. By combining skills, knowledge and efforts, the entire organization benefits.

It goes without saying that Marketing and IT have different missions within an organization. But, where those missions overlap, it is in each groups’ best interest to cooperate for the good of everyone. Sometimes this involves compromise and sacrifice. Isn’t that true in any relationship?

Here’s my challenge to my IT counterparts in 2012: Reach out to your Marketing colleagues and try to find meaningful ways you can help them succeed. Look at their business objectives and see if you can find ways to help meet them. Not only will you learn more and expand your horizons, you will help the whole business do better. And that, my friends, is what it’s all about.

What say you? Are you in a corporate IT group and have a good relationship with your Marketing counterparts? What kinds of things help the relationship? Please feel free to share any tips in the comments.

photo credit: mikecogh

Advertising for liquor stores is fairly new in the Texas town in which I live. It’s only been a little over a year since citizens voted to allow sales of spirits within the city limits. Now that there is a bit of competition for the locals’ alcohol dollars, advertising is becoming more and more common.

On our local talk station, I caught a piece on the way to work which really hit me. I don’t remember the exact wording, but here’s the gist of it:

Are you tired of holiday shopping already? Are you sick of trying to find the right gift for the right person – especially that hard-to-buy-for person on you list? Are you fed up with the crowds and the sales and all that? Well, all you need is to stop by <local liquor store> and get what you need to get you through the holiday season.

At this point, I started laughing so hard I almost had to pull over to avoid running off the road. The instant implication to me was that if you’re tired of holiday shopping, you should stop by one of their three convenient locations and buy some booze and tie one on to forget the whole mess.

Of course, I don’t think that was the intended message. Through my laughter, I think I caught something about getting a bottle of wine for someone and that gift cards are always a great gift. I didn’t quite get the rest of the message because I was still laughing at the image of crowds of people running to their store to get items to help them forget their problems for a while.

This is why it’s important to have lots of people test your ad. This isn’t the first ad spot to convey a mixed message, and it certainly won’t be the last. While I’m sure the message I received was not the one intended, I wonder how many others heard it the same way. While the small business owner may not have the time or money to organize a focus group, perhaps recording the copy and passing it around to friends online would suffice to catch unintended messages.

What say you? Have you heard any funny, mixed-message advertisements this year? Do you have any suggestions how smaller business owners can “focus group” their advertising while not spending tons of cash to do it? Please feel free to share in the comments.

photo credit: swanksalot

I recently had a great chat with a younger person who was looking for advice about opportunities which had presented themselves. It was great to talk to someone with great passion about what they do and where they want their career to go. I was also quite flattered I was asked for wise counsel.

It also reminded me of the importance of the Mentor/Peer/Mentor relationship and how that can fit into our professional (and personal) life.

You Need A Mentor
Let’s face it: none of us are perfect. As much as we’d like to think we know everything and are wise beyond our years, the truth is we don’t and we should constantly be looking for opportunities to learn. This is where a mentor comes in. Find someone who knows more about your business and business in general and ask them to be your mentor. If they are a servant leader, all the better. This person should be someone who’s willing to ask you tough questions and challenge you in various areas. Schedule a time once a month or so to buy them lunch and chat about what’s going on.

You Need Peers
Friends are very important. Spending time with those whom we have things in common is not only enjoyable, it’s necessary. We need people we can laugh with, cry with, and blow off steam to. Find friends who challenge you intellectually and otherwise. This group should also include those who are willing to hurt your feelings for your own good.

You Need To Mentor Someone Else
A true servant leader is one who makes sure those he or she leads are equipped to succeed at the job they’re in now, and also the job they will move to next. While it’s true you don’t know everything, you know more than some. Be willing to mentor others and pay it forward. There are many young, hungry minds out there who need to learn what you already know. Also, one of the biggest challenges in any business is succession. Spend time developing the leaders who will be in charge when you retire. Don’t wait – start doing this now!

You may already have these three groups in your life. If you do, that’s great! If you don’t, however, start making plans to get these people into your life soon. Everyone benefits when we have mentors, peers and “mentees” in our lives.

Summer does content strategy, and has been involved in content generation for 12 years. Her employer requires all employees to have a personal blog related to content in order to let them have a voice in the industry. They also blog on the corporate blog.

Summer tweets as @summerH

• Whether to have separate personal and business blogs really depends on what business you’re in
• At a recent conference, it was said “Being human is the new black.” You need to express your real voice in your writing
• The policy at her company is simple: “Don’t be stupid.”
• The things you write on a personal blog can lead to business contacts. You never know who’s going to read your stuff. They may never find you “business” blog, but might get to know you anyway
• Consider: if you want to be found – connect all your stuff together somehow. Otherwise, set up an alias to keep stuff completely separate
• Even a corporate blog should have a personal voice. People will relate more to a person than a “corporation.” Instead of having a “talking logo,” be a person or persons. People want to know the people who make up your business
• Summer tries not to tie herself to a calendar when blogging. She would rather write something interesting and timely rather than write “just because it’s Tuesday”
• When posting, consider a filter like, “What would my mother think about this” or sister, or dad, or whomever. That can help keep you in line and possibly out of trouble
• If you have separate blogs, you can use purposeful linking either by inclusion or omission

Some ideas I got from the Stump The Nerds panel at BlogathonATX with Jeremy Arntz, Jackie Dana and Pat Ramsey. They were taking questions on techie topics relating to blogging and other web sites.

• While all blog platforms have great features and are easy to set up, a self-hosted WordPress install gives you many more options, there are a lot more themes to choose from, and you have a lot of control over your site.
• Cloud hosting is good if you want to scale to more memory, disk space and processor power
• Use Akismet is a great plug-in for catching comment spam. It’s worth signing up for a WordPress.com account to get an API key
• Analytics is easy and important. Google Analytics is a good option
• Use Regenerate Thumbnail plugin for WordPress to automatically resize thumbnails when you redesign your site.
• Use a cache plugin to speed up your download times. W3TotalCache is a good option
• Nextgen Gallery is a great plugin if you display a lot of images
• Don’t forget a social media sharing plug in to help readers share your site
• Don’t go crazy downloading plugins, if you get too many plugins your site’s performance will take a hit. Plus, there’s more updates to keep track of and more chances for problems
• A good category structure can benefit your SEO more than tags. Don’t forget the basics like good content and titles, too
• Tags are very handy for plugins that display related stories with a post
• Learning CSS, PHP and HTML are very important. Especially if you try to get help from a developer. You should have a sense of what’s going on – it’ll save you time and money in the long run
• Backups are very important. This is especially true if you try to hack some code yourself. It’s nice to be able to roll back changes if you mess something up
• Don’t install a plugin just because you think it’s cool. Install it only if you have a real need for the functionality it offers
• Is SEO important for the personal blogger? It is if you want people to read your blog. But, not every blog will be successful. If no one is interested in what you right about, all the SEO in the world will help it. Consider tweaking your content or changing your format
• Make sure to delete old plugins and themes you no longer use
• Make sure to use a good strong password. That’s your first line of defense against hacking. Also, avoid using “Admin” for the admin user name. (I wrote a post about creating strong passwords a while back: Four Steps To Better Passwords - you might find it helpful)

Talmadge Boyd (@Talmadge) headed up with first session at BlogathonATX and gave out some great tips on video bloggin. Here they are, in no particular order of importance:

• Anyone who’s not afraid of their face should video blog. You shouldn’t be afraid, how you look like how you’re going to look.
• Check out The War of Art by Steven Pressfield (Amazon Affiliate link).
• Don’t use the excuse that “I’m just not into it today” or “The muse just isn’t with me” for creating. If you create for a living, get out there and do it.
• Content-wise, everything needs to be bite-sized. People don’t consume things like they used to. A challenege it to make thjngs short enough and compelling enough to to get your message across.
• Write a short piece and then shoot based on on that idea or thought.
• Don’t overthink things to the point where you don’t actually do anything. You can have a great idea but it’s no good if you don’t actually produce something to get your idea out somehow.
• It’s a great idea to make sure you include a transcript of your content when you embed video in your site. Very important for SEO purposes.
• Make sure to include keywords from your content in your file name. Don’t neglect keywords in descriptions and keywords when you upload to YouTube.
• Video quality is very important, but audio quality is just as important. People will watch content with good audio and bad video more than the opposite. If you’re trying to articulate something, you need to be heard. Consider investing in a condenser microphone – not too expensive, but very effective.
• Don’t let editing get in the way of creative time. It’s almost better to just reshoot the thing (if it’s short enough). Don’t be afraid to practice a little, too.
• When doing webinars, consider sitting a camera off to the side to record yourself so you can have multiple angles and repurpose the content.
• Natural light is great. Use the sun as much as you can.
• Invest in a small tripod. It helps so you don’t shake too much.
• Rule of thumb for length is 1:30. But, if you have compelling content, people will watch (think Ted talks).
• David Haddad offered this tip: If you’re too blue (because of lighting), consider putting a different color on your monitor screen to balance out the color of your face.
• For those who are interested in a white balance card, check out this article on Wilsonart’s “The Statement” blog: http://goo.gl/AwU2B (Disclaimer: I work for Wilsonart)

In the first installment of this interview, the Social Media Manager for The Henry Ford, Kate Storey, described some of the strategy behind the organization’s social media efforts. In this installment, we touch upon how it all got started and Kate gives us some highlights of upcoming things to look for at the Dearborn, Michigan museum.

When it comes to strategy, you’re the social media front person for all of this. You, obviously, must have buy-in from the higher ups in the marketing areas. Did they bring you on board to do this because they saw the need or was it something you started as you were doing other things within the organization?

I’ve been with the organization for five years now.

In fact, I just missed meeting you the last time I was here. I met Jared and the other intern who was working at that time.

Jared was fantastic helping us with our social media.

And I still talk to him from time to time.

Good. He’s doing quite well. His background is in public relations just as mine is. That’s where I started and that’s how I got started here at The Henry Ford. I was at an agency previously and came here and was doing some of the more traditional public relations work.

It actually started with an internal, grass-roots effort. There were a couple of us here in the organization who were interested in social media or who were already established on social media. Our Curator of Technology, Suzanne Fisher, is quite well-known on Twitter (@publichistorian) and through her [Public Historian] blog, especially among other curators and technology curators and people interested in the history of technology. She was a key part of the group of us who started talking over lunch, saying, “We should be doing this. Why aren’t we doing this?”

We talked to a couple of our bosses, our Chief Information Officer and my director, the Director of Media and Film Relations. We asked, “What do you think about this?” They said, “It sounds like a great idea, let’s give it a try.”

We started out rather slowly, with just the Facebook page and the Twitter handle, @thehenryford. We also had a very early attempt at a blog. That was very rough because there was nobody managing it full time. It was just all of us pitching in and adding in things as we saw them. We wrote what we thought people might be interested in. We did start to have conversations back and forth with people.

All of a sudden it started to grow. People here realized that if we want to provide the type of content people were asking for, we’d have to have someone on full time managing it. My boss and I had some conversations and I started as the social media manager this past November.

We relaunched our blog at the beginning of the year. We’re trying to focus more on that so we can share more content. We want to take that behind the scenes look even further than we can on Facebook and Twitter.

Is there anything else you can think of that you might want to tell about Greenfield Village, The Henry Ford or about social media in general?

Jennifer (@jkbusy) Standing next to a Ford Model T while someone plows a field at the Firestone Farm at Greenfield Village

I love the conversations. I love being able to talk with people every day. I love that I can meet with people from all over. You came to visit from Texas and I can meet you. People come here from all over the world and it’s wonderful to have those conversations online and occasionally get to meet them in person.

I would hope that people would take the time to find out about museums or other organizations online.

The benefit of working in an organization like this is that it’s really hard to run out of content because there is so much here and so much information.

And there is so much here we don’t see. I remember reading some tweets from Scott Monty when he went into the archives. I thought, “I’d love to see that.”

Which you can do. We have our Benson Ford Research Center, which is open to the public and is somewhat like a public library. You can come in and browse though our archives. We have a very, very extensive collection of Ford Motor Company history because we are their archive center. At the same time we also have everything from a fantastic violin collection and other different elements which people can come and explore. If you want to learn about something, come here and you’re probably going to find information about it.

You can also find a lot of information from the archives through our web site. You can contact a curator or a research specialist online if you’re not able to come here in person. Of course, if you come here in person you can arrange for a tour of our archives.

 Next time I’m in town I’ll have to check that out. As a kid growing up here in the area, we’d come here quite regularly on field trips and such. People who live here may take for granted that this is here. When you leave, you realize that this museum is really unique. There are smaller versions of the Village around the country, but there is so much more to see here. I also ask people who are car buffs if they have ever visited The Henry Ford Museum. They tell me “no” and ask, “They have a museum?” I tell them they have to check it out – they have every kind of car in the world there.

And we are upgrading our automotive exhibit. It’s becoming the “Driving America” exhibit. It will open in early 2012. It’s going to be completely updated with lots of interactive displays which will help people connect with the history. That’s one of our big aims, to help people connect with different parts of our collections, even if they are not directly related. You may start with a car and we’ll show you a presentation about car safety in that era, and then we will show you a diner which may have been open at that time. We want to present this so the entire story comes together.

The text for this article was transcribed from the audio I recorded of our conversation and edited for clarity and formatting.

I first wrote about how The Henry Ford in Dearborn, Michigan “gets” social media back in 2009 after a visit there to see the “Guitar Stars and Cars” exhibition. I’ve had the opportunity to visit again a couple of times since then; most recently a couple weeks ago. This last time, I had the foresight to contact Kate Storey, Social Media Manager for The Henry Ford, ahead of time and arrange to talk with her about how they use social media to help tell the story about this unique indoor and outdoor history museum.

In this installment of the interview, Kate describes the basic strategy she and her coworkers employ to engage people about The Henry Ford and Greenfield Village*.

I’m really interested in how The Henry Ford and Greenfield Village are using social media to get the word out about this gem of history.

We’re trying to find ways to let people know about the different things happening here.

People outside the area don’t know or may not have had a chance to visit here before. Truth be told, not many people think of Detroit as a vacation destination because, unfortunately, there are a lot of bad perceptions about the area. I think that once people come to Detroit, they will see that the city itself is really a fantastic place to visit.

The people behind the @visitdetroit Twitter handle, managed by the Detroit Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau, have been doing a very good job and working very hard to try to change perceptions about the area and get people to come and explore. They say “We know what you’ve heard, now come to the area and give it a try. Come see it for yourself.”

Our location and our attractions are part of this as well. We hope that as people start to explore the Detroit Metro Area they will discover us and see what we have going on here. We’re using social media to give people the inside and “behind the scenes” looks.

There is such a wide range of interests here. One misperception people have is that because it’s called “The Henry Ford” that it’s either only about Henry Ford himself or it’s just about the Ford Motor Company, or all about cars. That’s not really true.

 Right, it’s not at all. it’s really about a lot of everything

Exactly. We present many other things in many different areas. But, there are many people who want to learn more about Henry Ford, the Ford Motor Company or cars. So, we do present some of that history. At the same time we want to show many different ways Americans have innovated over the years and different ways people have helped make this country great.

We hope that through social media we are sharing those stories so that people understand, for instance, we have a fantastic design collection in the Henry Ford Museum; great examples of furniture and industrial design and many other things.

And out here in Greenfield Village we have all these different buildings which tell different parts of America’s history. One can visit the Wright Brothers home and their bicycle shop where they built the first airplane. We also have Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory. Many people come here and say, “I didn’t know you had those things.” They had no idea, and either thought the buildings were still in their original locations or that they didn’t exist any more.

Henry Ford had the foresight to preserve those buildings and bring them here. We continue to keep them up and present them today in the hope that people will make those connections between the past and the present.

I know you have a blog and that you’re very active on Facebook and Twitter. We’ve conversed on Twitter many times. How do you as the social media person incorporate those things together in presenting the story? What kind of strategy do you have to spread the word out about The Henry Ford and Greenfield Village on social media? 

It’s all about conversations on social media; it’s all about making those connections with people. Our effort is really just an online version of what we do here every day. We try to connect with people and share in their passions and their excitement over a particular artifact or with a program we’ve presented. Part of my strategy is to help bring that excitement and passion online and to spark those conversations which a presenter might have here in Greenfield Village with a visitor as the person might say “I didn’t know you had this here.” Or they might say, “Tell me more about this point in history.” We’re really hoping to bring those types of conversations online and to be able to share them more broadly so more people can take part. It’s not just a one to one interaction; now it’s with everybody.

It helps us to learn as well. It helps us to understand what types of programs people would like to see or do here. Perhaps it means we should do more video content or more stories on our blog. Perhaps they would like to just have a “here’s what’s happening right this minute in Greenfield Village” kind of thing. Perhaps it’s a quick snapshot or tips about how to make your visit more interesting. We might even help people who are doing research or who are interested in trains, for instance, and they want to get a little more information. We can answer questions like “At what point were steam engines still widely in use?” We can answer many questions like that.

Part of our strategy is to help share those conversations and that excitement.

The Weaving and Pottery Shops in the Liberty Craftworks Area in Greenfield Village

 Do you have a YouTube Channel?

We do.

OK. I just haven’t seen it yet. I was just in the Glass Shop and was taking some Bloggie shots and thought to myself “They must have a YouTube channel; I just haven’t seen it yet.”

Yes, we do have a YouTube Channel. I’ve put up several videos recently about our Liberty Craftworks area. We did a 3-part video series about firing our salt kiln outside our pottery shop.

I did see the blog post about that. I was just telling my mom, “Hey, I know how that works because I read about it on their blog.”

That’s so good. Farther down in the blog post there is a link which takes you to the video where we show how it works.

I’m also getting ready to post one about the glass shop. Our glass artisans were changing out the crucibles in the glass shop. As part of that they had to remove all the molten glass which has accumulated over the past several months. It looks like lava just pouring out of it; it’s very cool looking. That will be coming soon.

Click here for the next installment in which Kate will describe how The Henry Ford’s social media efforts got started and some new things coming to the museum.

* I transcribed this from the audio I recorded of our conversation and edited for clarity and formatting.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times … . With apologies to Charles Dickens.

Vendor #1 did some work for us. It was very well done, but there was a small detail missing. The small detail probably wouldn’t have cost us much success. It may have been the result of a miscommunication on our part, but nevertheless when brought to the attention of our account manager he took immediate steps to fix the problem. No fuss, no muss, just done.

Very well done.

Vendor #2 was doing some web work for us. I gave them some instructions which would have cause some small problems down the line. I had missed a small, but rather important detail in my instructions. Nothing critical would have happened and it could have been fixed later on. Of course, it’s always best to get started on the right foot.

How did they handle it? Quite well, as a matter of fact. Instead of just going along with what I told them, they contacted me via email and explained why my instruction would not have the outcome I expected. Not only were they very gracious in their explanation, they also provided some excellent and authoritative documentation pointing out my mistake.

It’s nice to know you’ve partnered with a team you can trust to have your back.

Very well done again.

Vendor #3 does some great work for us. I had some questions about some of the work. It’s not that the work they’re doing is bad. It’s actually quite the opposite. In this case, we wanted to be able to accurately measure what’s going on so we can make better informed decisions and give them better guidance as to how they can help us going forward.

They did great accommodating us for part of our request, but for another part we seem to have a disagreement about how to go about getting to a solution. When asked questions about this via email, they go unanswered.

Not so well done.

No doubt, we can all share stories such as these. The key for us as service providers is to remember to be gracious when we are right, and when we are wrong. It benefits everyone when we put our best foot forward. As you build a relationship with your customers and partners, there will be disagreements from time to time. It’s how you handle those disagreements over the long haul which separates you out of the “Good” or “OK” groups to the “Great” group.

Don’t get me wrong: all three of these vendors do great work and (if it were strictly up to me) I’d continue to hire them to do what they do. My purpose in sharing these stories is to help remind all of us about the importance of building good relationships and the constant work which goes into doing that with excellence.

I was born and raised in the Detroit area, though I haven’t lived there for many years. I joined the Army in the 80s and left the Motor City with every intention of coming back when my enlistment was up. I ended up making a career out of the Army, marrying a Texas gal and ended up staying in Texas when I moved back into civilian life. Even though I’ve lived in Texas most of my adult life, I still keep track of what goes on in Detroit. I keep up with the news, I watch the auto industry and I’m still a Red Wings fan. What happens there is important to me not only because it’s where my roots are, but also because it’s where most of my family still lives.

I went to visit there this past January. It was hard to see all the empty buildings where businesses were thriving during my previous visit. The recent recession hit Detroit hard, just as the recession in the early 80s did – only this time it was harder. Even with the seemingly endless list of problems facing the area, I could see glimmers of hope here and there. It wasn’t something I could quite put my finger on until just last week. It finally came together in a piece I wrote  for the Du Detroit website.

Despite the hard times, there are people in Detroit who see the empty store fronts and vacant lots as canvases where a new Detroit can be created. There are entrepreneurs who are in the city carving out a new space for themselves. They are creating jobs and hope in a city which that needs both of those things. These are the people who are the future of Detroit. Some are native born and some are transplants. All of them have the attitude that failure is not an option.

Their story is being chronicled by Boston-area filmmaker Eric Proulx in a project called “Lemonade: Detroit.” Check out the trailer:

Lemonade: Detroit Trailer from Erik Proulx on Vimeo.

What’s a Boston guy doing making a movie about Detroit? Check out his story, “Why Me? Why Detroit?”

Some people may think we should just sit back and let Detroit go, to pass away peacefully. I think that’s wrong. Eric shows that Detroit’s story really belongs to many of us. It’s not just about “them,” it’s really about “us.” This is a story which needs to be told.

You Can Help
Watch the trailer and then please consider giving a donation to help get this movie completed. You can donate a little as a buck or as much as you like. It’s quick and easy through PayPal (you can donate via credit or debit card if you don’t have a PayPal account).

Watch for this movie when it comes out. I saw a 15-minute preview last week and I can see it’s going to be excellent.