Blog Length

August 9, 2019 //
2

What’s the right blog length for a post? Isn’t a bit like asking how long a piece of string should be, and that of course depends on the purpose for the string.

That said, there’s never a shortfall of best practice articles trumpeting the right length for a blog post. It’s an old chestnut, and it keeps changing. A few years ago it was about 450 to 500 words. These days, for long term SEO they reckon 1600-1800 words, which is clearly way more than 500 words, and waaaay more than my typical post. Perhaps the advice is not exclusively for blog post content, but you get the impression it is.

As with all things marketing, you have to keep your objective in mind. SEO is about attracting people to your stuff and building a following. I’ve always said that the purpose of my blog is rather self-serving, to keep the discipline of writing, in which case I can make them as short or long as I like. As it happens, they retain a striking consistency of length.

The current vogue for longer ‘anchor’ or ‘capstone’ blog post content doesn’t seem to hurt Seth Godin. An early inspiration for my own blog, Mr G seems to have garnered an immense following with a pithy style and length that hasn’t changed in a decade. Mind you, he has broken ground in marketing on numerous occasions and has a large bunch of other strings to his bow.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing

Blogworthy

August 7, 2019 //
0

Often it’s just a nugget of information, a flash of a thought, or a sideways comment that provides the inspiration for one of my short posts.

So what is blogworthy? What idea, opinion or story is worth a pauldilger.com blog post? Firstly, it’s got to be robust enough an observation that I can spend a minimum of four short paragraphs on it. You can cast your eye over the previous 900-plus blog posts, but I don’t think I’ve ever written one less than four paras.

Secondly, I sometimes invoke the rule that if I don’t remember it, it’s not blogworthy because it’s not memorable enough for me to retell. I don’t often invoke the rule though, because I’m middle aged and my brain can’t retain thought like it used to, especially if I’m concentrating on something else at the time.

These days I almost always write down the blog title, on my phone or a scrap of paper. Usually the title on its own, sometimes an explanatory sentence or two if the title is a little cryptic.

Thirdly, if I can’t remember the central premise of the short descriptor, I don’t write it. How could I?

I’ve lost far too many blog post ideas to try and hold them in my head. When you’re nearing the 4-figure mark for total posts you can’t keep dipping into a finite well.

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Categories Communication, Marketing, Strategy

Ryanair Recycling

August 5, 2019 //
0

I like the newish thing with Ryanair where you can add a buck to your flight price to offset your carbon footprint for the journey. It’s a token gesture I know, but it’s heading in the right direction. I wonder how Ryanair passes on the buck to the relevant authority or worthy cause?

I took a flight with Ryanair the other day, accompanying my mother to the UK. She took a can of juice and I took a can of soda. Towards the end of the flight the stewards came with the white plastic bags to take away rubbish. It looks like everything goes into the bag.

I asked the steward if they recycled, since I had two aluminium cans and two plastic cups to get rid of. No, he said, shaking his head in a rather embarrassed fashion. I said I would take them with me and recycled them at my Mum’s place.

Maybe he was wrong, but maybe not. With Ryanair it’s all about process. They’re massively process-oriented, striving for operational edge and, as I write this post, seeing their profits dwindle and talking about flight crew layoffs. I can’t imagine how they think that taking away rubbish in one bag and recyclables in another bag is a good use of their resources. To them they’d rather take the slight hit to their brand. Short term goggles to stay in the game over long term loss to the planet.

Action and reaction are equal and opposite of course, as Newton’s third law goes. Someone’s going to take the hit eventually, just not in your or my lifetime.

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Categories Customers, Marketing, Strategy

The Handshake

August 2, 2019 //
0

You can tell a lot from a handshake. First impressions and all that.

It’s not that the handshake is the only component of greeting someone. It’s the accompanying smile, the eye contact, the body facing the other person.

I once attended a corporate speaking engagement where the guy said the optimal time to clasp someone’s hand in a business handshake is 2 seconds. Anything shorter is a touch disrespectful, anything more is uncomfortable for the other person. Then there’s the angle of hand of the person leading the handshake. Palm down is a power play, palm up is subservient but also friendly.

As I said, it’s not only the handshake. It’s about eye contact, a ready smile, and physical engagement. I’ve seen people line up a handshake and actually be turned away for the moment of contact as they move onto the next person or thing. Not good.

When I shake someone’s hand, I extend my hand upright, with the arm at three-quarter length. A straight arm and they’re too far away, half arm makes them come into your personal space, another power play. My fingers are slightly splayed to stop someone gripping too soon and getting your fingers and none of your hand. I smile, face the person properly and apply a medium grip. If someone has a strong grip I increase my grip pressure; if a weaker grip I ease off on the grip. I don’t bother to adjust the angle of the power player’s or servile/friendly hand, as you’re advised to do. I simply go with it. Ladies and Gents, a medium grip is the minimum really. You don’t want to offer some a wet fish, and you don’t need a handshake like a docker’s vice to assert your personality.

Always good to say one’s name slowly to help the other person remember it. Telling them it’s good to meet them never hurts either.

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Categories Communication, Customers, General, Marketing, Sales

An Irish Secret

July 31, 2019 //
0

There is such a thing as an Irish secret, at least according to my in-laws. It goes something like this:

‘I told you that in confidence! No-one’s supposed to know, it’s supposed to be a secret.’

‘I only told my [insert family member of choice], honest!’

‘So?! Which part of secret were you not getting?’

‘No, no, I thought it was an Irish secret…’

‘Meaning?’

‘With an Irish secret you only tell one person at a time.’

Interesting concept. A secret is one of those absolute things. It’s either a secret or it isn’t. In reality, of course, it’s not absolute and you could argue there’s no such thing, unless only one person in the world knows and how plausible is that? Maybe you could argue that it doesn’t actually exist if only one person knows it – rather like the tree falling in the forest not making a sound because nobody heard it – and only becomes a secret once more than one person knows…

It appears from a communication point of view that there are degrees of information, from narrowcast or one-to-one up to broadcast, and secrets are no different.

If you’re genuinely the only person – or one of a very small number – that the secret-holder has told, and you keep your promise until the original secret-holder decides that the secret can be told, then you are a secondary secret-holder of high worth and value, in my view. Not easy, or sometimes desirable, to do. If the secret is bad, and someone has suffered adversely, then you can make the reverse argument and all bets are off.

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Categories Communication, General

The Devoted Divoteer

July 29, 2019 //
0

A divoteer is an old-fashioned word for a golfer. It appeared on a recent page of the daily edition of Jeff Kacirk’s Forgotten English calendar, which sits on the desk of my home office.

I’m not a regular player anymore, more of a lapsed player, so not really a devoted divoteer. I do, however, like to watch it when I can, either on screen or very occasionally at an event.

With golf more than anything, I feel, you miss it when you don’t play, and then wonder why you missed when you do play. You have to practise, practise, practise; the margins are so fine that you have to trust to a very well grooved swing and feel.

As such, for me the sport often feels like a template for work as well as play. Not necessarily a case that you miss work when you’re sunning yourself on the beaches of the Med, more so that the more you hone your craft, the better you get at it. The devoted divoteer can take the same approach down the fairways and corridors of work too.

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Categories General

What a Waste

July 26, 2019 //
0

I’ve blogged on the concept of waste before. In fact I’ve done it here and here.

I’m not a big fan of waste. You observe it everywhere. Food waste, materials waste, packaging waste, energy waste, resources waste, and wastes of time.

What about cut flowers? They look lovely, but their lives are literally cut short for personal pleasure rather than longer pleasure that benefits the wider community. In fact, anything we use for something that doesn’t last long enough – and we all make a judgement on the enough part – or doesn’t create anything new, is not a good return. It’s a waste.

Of course, time is the greatest waste of all. It’s what I feel most keenly when someone dies before their time, if you pardon the clumsy pun. Even if it’s someone I don’t know. The lost potential, the lost possibility for them to further touch and improve the lives of others. We’ll never get that back.

Which is why the exclamation ‘what a waste’, for the smallest detail like a missed shot on goal, or to express the biggest ideas, is probably the biggest criticism we can make. It’s a huge, damning insult.

So, calling someone a time-waster is a deep criticism to level at someone. They’ve wasted your time, and the time of others, and that is indeed a heinous sin.

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Categories General

Startegy

July 24, 2019 //
0

I feel sure, without any empirical evidence to back it up, that some of the greatest inventions, jokes, phrases and so on started their lives as a mistake. A transcribing error, a misheard comment, a miscommunication, or maybe misheard lyrics.

The title of this blog post is no typo, I meant to write it. But it did begin as a typo, when I was writing an email on strategy, and wrote startegy instead.

When you think about it, strategy is all about starting, about getting started. It can sometimes be daunting to ‘do’ strategy. There are processes to follow, people to involve, data to collect, decisions to be made. Then you have to execute on it, as strategy is nothing without execution.

If you’re stuck, start! Somewhere, anywhere, to get the process moving and make the early mistakes.

My typo reminded me that strategy is as much about doing as it is about thinking, planning and plotting. Startegy – the science of starting.

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Categories Communication, General, Strategy

Demand Degeneration

July 22, 2019 //
0

Ask any business leader what their primary business challenge is and you’ll often hear words like ‘demand’, ‘pipeline’ or ‘more, better leads’. There are very few businesses that can rely on a never-ending stream of inbound enquiries from prospects or customers looking to buy.

Generating demand is generally the domain of the marketing department, although in business-to-business environments it’s not uncommon for the sales people to be expected to find or develop about half of the demand themselves. Many businesses therefore take a well resourced, scientific and automated approach to being in the right places with the right content to engage those people looking to fix a problem or exploit an opportunity.

Despite what you might have read from the minority of practitioners who’ve written or published ‘how to’ books, blogs or videos on the subject, while the principles are straightforward the practice is hard, especially when the business has a relentless demand for high quantity, high quality expressions of interest to keep its costs of acquisition at manageable levels. What often happens is that instead of demand generation you get demand degeneration, by which I mean a lack or shortfall of pipeline for your products and services.

What are the reasons for this? As you might expect, they’re many and varied. Incorrect market sizing, poor segmentation, a lack of understanding of the customer, inferior or inappropriate content, and insufficient or manually dependent activities are some of the common reasons. There’s also a requirement to stay current with trends and technologies in demand generation, since ways of engaging with customers have a natural lifecycle that means they won’t always be productive and will be replaced by new ways.

It takes a relentless drive and relentless inquisitiveness to engender relentless interest in something. That’s a pretty tall order to avoid demand degeneration, and the good business will recognise this and have in place parallel activities like customer advocacy to keep the pump primed.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Strategy, Technology

Overweight Nation

July 19, 2019 //
0

I have carried out another of my detailed, nay exhaustive, studies into the human condition and have come to another shattering conclusion.

We are an overweight nation. I’ve reached this conclusion after a sustained 2-hour session of people-watching in a provincial airport departure lounge.

I need to qualify this on two fronts. Firstly, I mean the male side of the nation. They were the study. Secondly, it’s not that we’re an overweight nation, it’s that we’re an overweight and under-toned nation. I saw enough men with slight or pronounced paunches that if you gave me a buck for every one of them I could have paid for my return flight.

The men with slight paunches were not overweight as such, it’s simply that the weight was not distributed correctly. We’re talking younger and middle aged men, younger than me, not older men for whom the slowing metabolism and decreasing activity exerts an inexorable toll on their midriffs.

What’s the cause? Modern lifestyle, unquestionably. Modern diets, modern mobility, modern commitments. And the Internet, which now accounts for the working day and a lot of our free time. We’re simply so much more sedentary than we used to me. We can send an email to Susan rather then walking a report over to her desk. Lifestyles have changed quickly and evolution will never be able to catch up.

It takes a lot of effort and time to put aside to stay in shape. If we’re not athletes by profession, we have limited time to devote to it and exercise is usually the first to go when it should really be the last. Look at any former athlete. How many look like they used to? How many are still in shape?

So it’s not just that we’re an overweight nation. We’re an overweight race.

 

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Categories General
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