Golden Practices Blog

The Emperor Has No Clothes

In 2005, I started this blog and at the same time, I started posting our Golden Web Reviews.

They are presented via a blog. I like the format for sharing and storing them which makes them easy to find, sort, and distribute (by RSS feed into readers and email) but it really isn't a true blog because it isn't a conversation, it's just our information without feedback.

The title of this post is part of my answer to my friend, Wendy Nemitz, principal of Ingenuity Marketing, when she said last week that our Golden Web Reviews are a pretty risky approach to marketing our website expertise and asked she me about making the choice to publicly critique the web presentations of CPA firms.

She's right. It's counter-intuitive to call attention to, as I say on the Golden Web Review page, "the good, the bad, and the ugly" of firms that are probably on my desirable future client list.

Truly, I contemplated for a long time whether, and how, I would go about publishing reviews of firm's websites. Not just the logistics but the approach. PC? Nice? Brutal? Who would I review? Who would I avoid?

What I told Wendy (and the rest of the Minnesota AAM Chapter to whom I had the pleasure of presenting on blogs and social media) was that, ultimately, I figured firms would benefit from and appreciate that someone was willing to say 'the Emperor has no clothes' and bring attention to the fact that few accounting firm websites are effective--if we were to talk also about WHY.

It's been a sound strategy for us. More than I anticipated. The Golden Web Reviews do get a lot of traffic which surprises me because we don't have many posted, and we've been going a loooonnnggg time between posting new ones (look for some news ones soon though, they are in the works!).

Much to my surprise, several firms we reviewed actually thanked us for the advice, ideas, praises for the "dos," and even the publicity. Two of the marketers said our "don'ts" validated their arguments which they had obviously lost with their partners. I never expected that sort of response. It is really cool. Some have redone their sites and incorporated our suggestions.

I confess I didn't know, back in early 2005, that a core element of social media would be authenticity and so the frankness of the approach was just right for the way in which the web was moving.  We got lucky in that respect.

Marketers know that marketing isn't all science. Some is just plain ol' trial and error.

This was experimental for me. But it felt right. Being honest is something I feel very comfortable with, and being critical in a fair and diplomatic way is something I'm glad to work continuously to get better at.

So, I'm wondering, as you read this, what are your thoughts on any or all of these things:

1. How do you feel about trying something even if you don't "know" it will work? Do you ever do it? Has it worked? If not, what have you learned?
2. Do you think we should open up comments on the Golden Web Reviews and make them more of a conversation--a real blog? Or just leave it the way it is?
3. Should we change the way we do our Golden Web Reviews? If so, what should we change?

I really appreciate any thoughts readers have about these topics. Thanks for considering sharing your answers.

Using Keywords More Naturally in Web Copy

People who write content for web are usually trying to strike a balance between helpful, meaningful information, and use of terms that will be attracting "the right" people from search engines.

As such, copy-writing can get tricky and the resulting text can be pretty scary, actually.

I enjoyed this brief article "Stop the Slaughter of Innocent Copy" over at Wordtracker.com that warns against overusing key terms.

Author Karon Thackston also offers a couple great examples of weaving in what you "aren't" or what you don't do in order to pull in some searchers while highlighting your alternative approaches.

Great Info on Viral Marketing

David Meerman Scott has again produced excellent and timely material on marketing in the digital age.

Again, he offers a free e-book. This one is The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free. His first was on New Rules of Marketing and PR.

Both are excellent. And his subequent 'real' book on the New Rules of Marketing and PR is THE absolute must-read book on e-marketing.

He only distributed his latest e-book via his blog and three weeks later, he writes:

It's been twenty days since I released my new ebook The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free.

I'm amazed at the stats. In just 20 days:

• 42,810 downloads (based on my Web analytics)
• Close to 100 blog posts about the ebook (depends on which blog search engine is used)
• Well over 1,000 hits on the exact phrase "new rules of viral marketing" (on the day I put out the ebook there were zero hits on the phrase.)

How did I achieve these results?

I didn't do a thing. I didn't beg the media to write about it. I didn't pay for expensive advertising to promote it. I didn't interrupt people by sending it out via email.

All I did was post it on my blog. That's it. You did the rest. Thank you for downloading the ebook and for talking about it.

(Well, I guess I can safely say that my viral marketing ebook has gone viral.)

I'll be on a live teleseminar Tuesday February 26th, 2008 at 5:00 PM EST to discuss viral marketing in depth. For about 70 minutes, I'll answer questions that you submit to me and discuss the issues people face with going viral. It's free to participate. I hope you can make it.

I've got the teleseminar date on my calendar. Can't wait!

Boredom

I've been thinking a lot about personal responsibility because of David Bohl's great post that I picked up in my recent Carnival of Trust post.

This morning, my daughter and I were having an interesting conversation. She's a couple weeks away from turning six which means she's constantly thinking about a lot of weird stuff and asks a lot of seemingly random questions. She asked me what "bored" means.

She's my fourth (and last) kid. Having three other kids (ages 14, 15 and 23) I've heard at least a couple hundred thousand (rough estimate) exasperated "I'm so bored" statements. Why do kids expect us, their parents, to fix their boredom?

So, I thought, wow, maybe if I define this for her right, I won't have to hear "I'm bored" another hundred thousand times in the next ten or so years.

Somewhat pleased with myself, and inspired by that above-mentioned post on responsibility, I answered her: "Bored is how you feel when you haven't yet decided what you're going to do next."

This makes me think about boredom in jobs, boredom with where we are in life. Has a lot to do with proactivity and decisiveness, doesn't it?

Also has me thinking about needing to teach our kids to rely on themselves more. If we leap to entertain them when they're bored (and what parent hasn't, even if just to shut them up??) how will they learn to be responsible for their own feelings and take action?

Aside from my 'boring' example, are there other ways we unitentionally help kids or employees, or even bosses, be less personally responsible?

Marketer to Attorney Ratio is 1:27

Some new legal marketing stats are in. Larry Bodine posted recent survey results reflecting that on average, AMLAW 100 law firms have one marketer for every 27 attorneys.

Don't worry too much about the reported average tenure stats. These are consistent with highly paid marketing exec tenures across all sectors (see my prior post here). Law is no different. Marketers are an itchy bunch to begin with, but together with stakes being high and participation/cooperation (and budgets!) of the firms being a bit lower than other sectors, well, maybe it's surprising marketers stay as long as they do.

I'm not sure of a ratio of marketers to accountants in either the Top 100 accounting firms or all firms in general but I'll dig around to see what I can turn up.

Carnival of Trust - Feb 08

There's something pretty cool about hosting this carnival on Mardi Gras...the concluding day of perhaps the most well-known carnival of all!

And it is remarkable that Mardi Gras goes on despite the destruction unleashed from Hurricane Katrina. I'd like to take pause and appreciate the spirit of trust by New Orleanians that Mardi Gras would (unquestionably, if you ask them) go on. And trust that New Orleans would rebound and rebuild.

This progress despite political strife, despite skepticism of others, and even somewhat despite reason (hey, I hate to say it, but we all know another storm could come).

Isn't this an amazing illustration of the sheer power of trust in what will be, and trust's sister, faith, in the ability to achieve/be/do.

On to the winning posts (there were so many to choose from!) for this month's carnival!

EARN “TRUSTED ADVISOR” STATUS

A regular teacher of lively and controversial ethics courses around the USA (a typically dull continuing ed. requirement for CPAs) Ron Baker repeatedly challenges professionals to reconsider how they view “trust” in their profession. In his post “Is Being a Trusted Advisor Enough?” he says “many firm leaders seem to believe that trust is a core competency of their profession.” He says it’s not. Sure, it’s required, but as a table stake like technical competency.

He adds: “…it is a mistake for any firm to advertise or market its trustworthiness.” That so many firms self-proclaim “trusted advisor” status (certainly a worthy aspiration which Charles Green, David Maister and Robert Galford described in their book of the same name) is an unfortunate and ironic side effect of the popular book. Self-proclaiming trustworthiness demonstrates misunderstanding of the very points these gentlemen made in their writings.

When it comes to trust, Ron reminds us: “Those who talk about it, injure it, and are perceived less believable. Your reputation, like trust, is based on what other people say about you.”

INVISIBLE WALL OF DISTRUST

Talking about buyers, Mark Slatin discusses the seller’s need to overcome the elephant in the room he defines as the “invisible wall of distrust.” He artfully describes the wall’s development, “One brick at a time, year after year, it was built with the mortar of false promises and layers of incompetence.” In other words, we all bear the burden of breaking through perception caused, in great part, by the actions (or inactions) of those who preceded us. Bummer.

To help us in this massive undertaking, Slatin provides us with his Five Pillars of Trust: Transparency, Reliability, Understanding, Sincerity, and Transform. I appreciate his points supporting the first four, especially Transparency and Sincerity, though I find Transform a little broad. But read it and see what you think.

UNVARNISHED TRUTH

Speaking of transparency, another sales post really stands out. I was always baffled when people would say, “everyone lies on their resume,” because I never did. I’ll bet Suzanne Lowe never did, either. In “I Told the Truth and Got Hired Anyway,” she shares stories of having been so honest in her “pitch” (that time in which people are practically expected to stretch the truth!) that she somewhat baffled her prospects. She confessed she didn’t have similar prior experience.

The result? They asked her the most important question that could have been asked: “Uh… well… then, what makes you think you could help us?” – a question that is not for the faint of heart under any circumstances. Like Suzanne, do lots of good prep to field the question well.

BRANDING RESPONSIBLE FOR CORPORATE DE-PERSONALIZATION?

A post by Louise Manning at The Human Imprint contains a great list of ways to build market trust and shows why personalizing the corporate body is part of this effort. I agree with her there is a need/demand for both corporations and their people (business leaders) to be positive, real, authentic [and accessible!], etc.

However, I'm not sure I agree with Ms. Manning's drawn conclusion that it was the trend of focus on branding strategies that eroded our trust of those corporate leaders. I see the cause and effect somewhat differently. IMHO, the current state has much to do with distrust (and weariness) of corporate hype and fluff which isn't the same thing as branding. A brand might be proposed by a company, but it is only becomes a true and validated brand when sustained, thus created, by the buyer. This doesn't occur without consumer trust in the consistency of the brand.

BUILDING TEAM TRUST

I’m really digging J.D. Meier’s review (at The Book Share blog) of one of my favorite management reads: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni.

A key point is that a team is most effective when operating at a level of “vulnerability-based trust” versus the primarily superficial level of experience-based trust we experience when we trust someone based on predictability due to past-performance. Lencioni does an amazing job of explaining the deeper level of (work-based) intimacy that is required for teams to hit peak performance together.

I highly recommend this excellent recap of a phenomenal book, and then read (or re-read) the book.

IF YOU WANT IT DONE RIGHT, DO IT YOURSELF??

Almost the polar opposite is illustrated in a post entitled "If You Don’t Assume Responsibility, Who Will?" in which David Bohl essentially tells us two things. First: take personal responsibility with especially good advice about mindset when fielding an issue involving any aspect of your company not with blame, but with ownership.

He breaks responsibility down… “response-ability” and shows us that if it’s “my” problem I can fix it! If it’s not our problem, we have the opportunity to be helpless, don’t we? I REALLY like that he says “If I’m responsible, if it’s *my* problem, then I can fix it….But if “you’re” responsible, I’m not able to…it’s not my problem to fix.”  (He still totally had me at that point. But then…)

Secondly, he advises handling things yourself to make sure you always have the responsibility. Yikes! Isn't this distrust? "Doing it oneself" could very well be related to a common leadership connundrum, couldn't it? Not trusting our apprentices, or even our partners, to do what they ought to? Egads. Rather than grab an assignment back when it looks like it’s going—or gone—south, it seems an optimal training opportunity to teach responsibility and the accompanying sense of accountability and pride in one’s work.

Sorry, David, there’s definitely wisdom in the post's emphasis on personal accountability (and we do need more of it in this world!), but I worry that letting others off the hook doesn’t help build a sustainable organization.

HOMELOANS & CHEESE

If you've ever wondered what mortgage lending and cheese have in common, Wally Bock strings it all together (sorry, couldn't resist) on his post "Requiem for Cheese and Simple Trust."

He explains why trust is natural and human and how we've removed that element, much to our detriment, with slick systems and automated approaches.

FACEBOOK’S VALUE BASED ON TRUST

Facebook strives to recover from its user-response to Beacon, a perceived (and certainly potential) trust breaching tool to track activities and, yes, user’s KEYWORDS (!) to predict needs and elevate advertising relevance. Oops.

As Jason Voiovich at State of the Brand 2008 mused:

What Facebook really did was butt up against the limits of its brand capital; quite literally, the trust users place in the platform to connect with friends in an online community in a free and open way. That is the true “brand” of Facebook….To the extent that Facebook loses that trust, its value deteriorates and so does its value to the advertisers.

US FOREIGN POLICY IS BASED ON…TRUST??

Martini Revolution illustrates: watch how you toss around the “T” word lest you be labeled a hypocrite. Last week’s State of the Union Address is the topic of his post, “Mr. Bush, you keep using that word ‘trust.’” Alex (not a big fan of the prez) is a bit heated pointing out: “Extraordinary that [Bush—expletive omitted] who trusts no one would use “trust” as the cornerstone of his final State of the Union Address.”

Indeed, Mr. Bush tells us “we must trust” in many things: free people and people who will choose freedom when given a chance; American homeowners; patients; doctors; students; American workers; researchers; scientists; those with innovative spirits, good hearts, etc.

He says our foreign policy, in fact, is based on “a clear premise” of trust. Really? It is?? I must have missed that.

I’m reminded of Ronald Reagan’s words in his moving speech* at Moscow State University in 1988: “I have often said: Nations do not distrust each other because they are armed; they are armed because they distrust each other.” Anyway, maybe it’s safe to say: don’t say it if you don’t do it.

* Reagan's speech is shared in its entirety in Ron Baker’s latest book, Mind Over Matter (Wiley, 2008)

TRUSTING YOUR CANDIDATE MATTERS MOST

Thinking more toward the future presidency, Paul McCord offers up "A Brief Lesson in Sales from Presidential Politics" in which he observes that having a sense of "trust" for a candidate is more important in this election than beliefs, issue stance, likability, and experience. On this important primary election day, do you agree?

I can buy that. We all know that positions change and we're learning that openness about a change can override any negative impact of the change itself.

But can trust really be sold or marketed?  Baker says no (above) and I tend to agree, but it sure sounds like the candidates are trying. Especially thinking of McCain's huge new "Trust" campaign launched yesterday. Guess we'll have to wait for the final chapter to see how this one plays out.

So go eat some King Cake, catch some beads, and drink a hurricane or two...Happy Fat Tuesday!

Past Carnivals of Trust are found at Charles Green's Trusted Advisor Associates website. Read them all here: http://trustedadvisor.com/carnivalofTrust/