[Strategy] The Temptation at Mass

When you build a product, create a service or develop a process, the temptation (whether at scale or not) is to pursue the acceptance of the masses and be for everybody.

When building, (and planning to build) the discipline is to be targeted and to pursue the special and the narrow—the long tail in essence.

The primary drivers for pursuing the acceptance of the masses at scale are fear, desperation and greed:

For money
For prestige
For status
For power

The fact of the matter is, the myth of mass acceptance as being the “golden ticket” to profitability over the long-term has been exploded by the presence—and the influence—of the most dominate communication tool yes invented by man—the Internet. Sure, there will be blips of products, services, and process, that will appear to catch the masses attention, but in reality, the mass effect is dying a hard death. As audience attention becomes harder and harder to contain and obtain at mass, the benefits of a product, service or process being for “everybody” erodes under the weight of mediocrity, ineffectiveness and banality.

For the peace builder, if the processes, services, products, and philosophies that you provide are not for “everybody” in conflict, the real discipline is in developing your own emotional and psychological responses to what that means, and then methodically acting on them.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Advice] 3 Stages to Launch – Part 2

There are three hard parts to launching any peace building project:

The first hard part is attaining technical knowledge (i.e. getting a degree, getting experience, phoning a friend, etc.).

When launching a peace building project, the savvy peace builder often doesn’t think too hard about the first part. In peace building fields from mediation to law, attaining technical knowledge is considered a rite of passage. Which is why peace building is so dominated by the presence of volunteer labor at one end (mediation) and highly paid labor at the other end (litigation) and there is a squeeze in the middle. As a result, many peace building practitioners continue to fund a self-perpetuating economy of training and certifications, rather than doing and experiences. This is a hamster wheel for another reason: The training and certifications are to reinsure that the peace builder continues to remain proficient in old skills they already know and practice (i.e. mediation skills) rather than training and certifying them in new skills that might be uncomfortable fro them to learn and practice (i.e. marketing, sales and business development).

The second hard part is getting the hardware together and attaining a certain level of comfort with it, particularly if it is new.

When launching a peace building project, learning new hardware (or software in the case of many entrepreneurial peace builders) is the second hardest part. Admittedly, there are ton of applications and software solutions that can be cobbled together to create the operational infrastructure for a functioning business model. But too often peace builders (as do many other entrepreneurs) become so focused on avoiding learning the new application (or fiddling with it constantly) that they miss completely the third hardest part of developing and launching a peace building project—sales.

The third hard part is developing content—and allying with partners in that development—and getting that content distributed to the right audience to genrate a lead, create a relationship and to close a sale.

When launching a peace building project, content development—books, articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, workshop/seminar content, and on and on—is seen as the most overwhelming aspect of launching. At the core of most content development practices are three objectives for the peace builder to consider:

What do I want my content to do? (i.e. drive brand recognition, drive sales, create actionable leads who will pay, etc., etc.)
Where do I want my content to be distributed? (i.e. from a workshop, from a blog post, from a podcast, etc., etc.)
Who do I want my content to target? (i.e. women with children, business owners with conflicts, men in divorce, judges in arbitration, etc., etc.)

Unfortunately, many peace builders get caught in a spiral of focusing obsessively out of fear on “how to make money” rather than focusing on “how to make a difference.” To be successful as an entrepreneurial peace builder, the things is to manage thinking about how hard the three hard parts might be to accomplish collectively, rather than avoiding actually taking the concrete steps to think (and act) differently about at least one of them individually.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] The 10 Year Overnight Success IV

We laid out for them, at one point in the meeting (a meeting that we had scheduled for, pushed for and planned for, by the way) all of the projects in which Human Services Consulting and Training is currently involved.

When we were done talking, we admitted to feeling—and thinking—that we have been in a bit of a long-term dip, since last October.

They (the other party on the other side of the table) laughed and told us that we had been “very busy” for being in a dip.

In another interaction we had, we were talking with another up and coming podcaster. We were talking about how long it takes to create a blog following versus creating a podcast following, versus creating a video based following.

We talked about how you need at minimum, 1000 raving, dedicated fans, gathered from the long tail, to make this work in the long-term.

Our fellow podcaster raised his eyebrows and said something to the effect of “It takes ten years to become an overnight success.”

Someone else, about a year and a half ago, said the same thing.

Stories of success (and the pornography of failure stories) litter the Internet, entrepreneurship, small business literature and, the truly American section of the local bookstore, the self-help section. But what is never pointed out in those stories, is that for at least a decade before you read the story on the Internet, became a fan online, watched a TV show with a “shark” in it, or even picked up that self-help book, the people that made that were toiling away in anonymity, just like you.

The path to both success and failure takes a decade of commitment and consistency, trial and error, tears and joy. Dizzying heights and terrible dips.

And whether you’re building a product, a service or some weird, wonderful hybrid, you better be willing to commit to a ten year long journey of ideas that might not work, people that might not like you all the time and projects that might fly, or crash and burn.

What separates the employees, from the risk takers, and the owners from the entrepreneurs is the willingness to go on a ten-year long walk.

Just keep walking…

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Advice] Content Commitment

The thing that destroys most content creation efforts is not lack of talent, ability, or innate skill.

The thing that destroys most content creation efforts is not lack of resources, lack of time or lack of money.

The thing that destroys most content creation efforts (from live streaming via Periscope and Meerkat all the way to writing a blog on a daily basis) is the lack of a will to consistently commit to a course of action.

Whether it works, or not.

Whether it attracts attention, or not.

Whether it scales, or not.

The lack of a will to commit to the process, regardless of outcome, seems foolish and pointless when stacked against economic metrics that have dominated content production for the last 100 years.

We still run into professionals who either own businesses, who have built projects, and who are accomplished at wringing a profit margin out of the world, who are shocked that we blog every day, or that we have a podcast with only one advertiser–at this point in its development.

Then they are even more shocked that we plan to do more things that do not produce revenue right away.

By doing things that do not produce revenue now, enable us to do all kinds of things that will produce revenues later on.

If more thinkers, builders and doers would adopt this mindset (by the way, it is the only mindset that works in the world of the digital, the automated and the algorithmic) the long tail would become fat, the economic value of consistency and commitment would experience exponential growth, and the level of the quality of content being created would increase.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Ok…So Ad Blocking is Here…

Ok…so ad blocking is here….

From browsers to mobile hardware, the drive is on (whether from the creators of ad blocking software or just from us all talking about it now) to empower consumers of content to block advertising they don’t want to see via software based means. This advertising, small and large web publishers argue, is part of a fundamental principle of mass media, going back at least a century. The principle comes down to a deal, which—like many deals—can be renegotiated and changed to reflect shifting values and principles:

We (web publishers) create content without charging you for the creation of that content, and in exchange you (the content consumer) give us attention and we charge a third party, the advertiser, to put ads in front of, and around, our content.

This same deal drove the development and growth of platforms, such as television, radio and newspapers, and the development and growth of content on those platforms, for the last 100 years.

But, the Internet was supposed to be a different content delivery platform.

Right?

Apparently not.

Now, consumers—instead of just choosing to ignore interruptive ads like they always have (and because measuring audience engagement is difficult (but not impossible) there are more intrusive, interruptive ads, not less)—content consumers are choosing to block everything.

Seth Godin wrote with hope fifteen years ago about permission marketing. Cory Doctorow writes with abandon about the anarchy of the web. But both of those writers and thinkers assume a fundamental point about most content, whether it’s on the internet, on the radio, on television, or in a magazine or newspaper, that must be written down and repeated out loud:

Most content on any platform isn’t good enough, interesting enough, relevant enough or entertaining enough, to act as the glue binding the audience of content consumers to the content creators in a “revenue for value” exchange based relationship.

This is why there are millions and millions of cat and baby videos on Youtube, but only a few breakout “stars.” This is why Vogue magazine (or Burberry on Instagram) will be fine with ¾ of their magazine content (or their social distribution feed) being ad space, but Mother Jones or The National Review might just wither and die with ad blockers. This is the reason there are 152 million blogs on the Internet, publishing 1.3 million pieces of content a day, but no blogger has risen to dominance on the web in 15 years.

Thus advertising.

There are a few ways out of this bind, but before we get to that, the question of “What kind of internet do we want to have?” must be answered. We (and we are including ourselves in this group as a content consumers) have not answered this question in any kind of meaningful way. Content consumers have to be a part of the conversation before the endpoint of plopping and advertisement in front of our eyes is reached. Content consumers (to build trust and get their permission) have to be engaged in the building, creating and disseminating of a product from start to finish—or not at all.

The first way out of this bind is by crowdsourcing content development. There are some sites on the web that do this well; there are many more that do it badly, or not at all. Crowdsourcing journalism, entertainment, and other forms of content may lead to less ad blocking—and higher revenue—rather than more by content consumers who feel emotionally invested in the product.

The second way out of this of this bind is by creating more subscription-based platforms. For subscriptions to work, there must be a consideration (and a careful one at that) by the web publisher about what kind of content is being created. Long tail philosophy should be ruling with brand-based content, but many are still stuck in the 1950’s. By the way, this is the only way that data gathering, analytics and implementation based on the data is useful as a tool for content creators and publishers, as well as the incorporation of micropayments via cryptocurrencies. Don’t believe me? Ok. What’s in your Netflix queue right now? And have you paid for a reSnap recently?

The third way out of this of this bind is by rethinking distribution systems. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even Google and Apple are going to war with each other to decide who controls the ad space of the mobile phone screen and the app walled garden. This war has to be fought (I guess) but thinking of these platforms less as content delivery systems, and more as content broadcast systems, would free many creators from the false choice of “Do I or don’t I put an ad in front of my content?” Email and RSS feeds circumvent broadcast systems and go directly to the audience content creators want. This is also the reason that creators on Meerkat and Periscope who are live streaming events (and their lives) are going to have trouble monetizing their content if the platform ever has to respond to the vicissitudes of Wall Street shareholders.

The fourth way out of this bind is by rethinking all the assumptions underpinning the web. The Internet has moved over the last 25 to 30 years, from being a niche communication channel to a worldwide, glorified telecommunications delivery system. What if the Internet shifted from being a global mass bullhorn, to being an individualized, personalized content delivery system? Mobile phone, tablet and app development is pushing the Internet in the direction of this development, but frankly, not far enough. Which is where blockchain technology really comes to the forefront.

The fifth way out of this bind is for content creators to make conscious choices—and stick to them—about how and where to monetize their content with ads. We are not naïve enough to think that advertising will disappear; there were ads broadcasting the services of prostitutes painted on the walls of buildings in Pompeii and Ancient Rome. However, when everyone can publish (but not everyone will publish) everyone has the choice to run a Google ad (or not) in front of specific content, they produce. We run ads in front of The Earbud_U Podcast, but not on the HSCT #Communication Blog, for a reason.

Ad blocking will not be the end of Internet publishing, nor will it serve as the death knell for advertising on the Internet. By defaulting to the opposite of these five alternatives to advertising on the Internet, many content creators will wither away, and die, on the web.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] Live Streaming for Peace Sakes!

Live streaming video apps such as Periscope, Meerkat, Blab.im and many others are hot right now.

As part of the long unwinding of television as a content delivery mechanism, they are a way for audiences to feel primacy at a live event as well as to feel as though they are a part of the event.

We quoted Woody Allen in a previous post, who said, “The audience has to know that they are the audience,” but with the advent of streaming and the rise of streaming personalities who blur the line between performer and engager this may no longer be true.

The real core of streaming is co-creation: Streaming video gives the audience the opportunity to create—along with the performer—a shared experience and produce shareable content for a micro audience. This is why sporting events have reflexively banned live streaming apps from their venues (MLB, NHL, US Open, etc.) and why concerts are thinking about it as well.

There are two things for the peacebuilder to consider when using mobile live streaming apps to build their marketing:

Conflict engagement is all about co-creating solutions to the issues, concerns and conflicts at hand with the parties. Many peacebuilders take this to mean that they fade into the background inside of the conflict process itself, allowing the parties the autonomy to do as they will to get to resolution. However, when the peacebuilder (with the participants consent) live streams the proceedings, then everybody involved attains a level of micro-celebrity.
Conflict engagement is also about being open with processes and procedures in order to educate and edify not only the participants, but also the public (the audience) at large. One of the reasons that many peacebuilder’s struggle with marketing and sales, is that both of these areas require openness and transparency around the product—peoples’ problems—in order to get more people into the room to solve their problems. This creates a level of vulnerability in the peacebuilder with which many professionals struggle. Live streaming used as a way to create “scheduled, must see viewing” opportunities (think of Oprah or Dr. Phil) creates more opportunities for vulnerability for the peacebuilder, not less.

Content co-creation with parties, audiences and peacebuilders is one of the many ways that live streaming video applications can advance the fields of peace, and bring more people into the engagement space around conflicts in their lives.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principle Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Strategy] Does Book Writing Still Matter?

Do books, and book writing, still matter?

In a world of free written content, indexed by Google and accessed by billions of people with Internet or mobile access, and a few keystrokes, what significance could writing a book possibly retain?

Let’s relate two stories that partially answer both questions:

I was at a conference earlier this summer at which I was the lunch keynote speaker. I had arrived early and was talking to the vendors who had lined up outside the hall to sell their products, services and processes to the attendees of the conference.

I stopped at several of the tables and eventually ended up engaging in a conversation with a sales representative from a company that specializes in engagement and recognition, two areas that I believe are critical to developing employees and keeping them at work.

In the course of the conversation, the person to whom I was talking mentioned that her organization had written a book about the core of their company’s focus and she wanted to give me a copy of the book.

Her assistant went to her car and 10 minutes later, I had the book (a hardcover) in my hands. I looked down at it and turned it over. Then I asked “How much do I owe you for this?” She looked at me and started laughing and said “Don’t worry, I’ve got an entire case of these books in the back of my car.”

The book—all that research, content, packaging, distributing, publishing and marketing—was $25.00.

In the second story, I was talking with a friend and colleague of mine in another industry. He and I were having lunch and discussing many topics, and in the course of our conversation, I brought up the fact that he recently had a book published. The topic of his book is on leadership and it represents his second book in several years.

He talked about how he was struggling to get attention for the book’s topic and how he had only sold one book at the time that we were talking (hopefully, by this point he’s sold a few more, but I haven’t followed up with him lately).

His book is around the same price point $25.00 as the hardcover book in the previous story, but he’s also offering workbooks, e-pamphlets and other “freebies” to sweeten the deal and make the price point more palatable. After all, there are hundreds of books on leadership published every year.

Do books, and book writing, still matter?

Some stats that show that it does. In the first half of 2014, books sales were up by 4.9% over 2013, accounting for $5,023,800 with adult nonfiction accounting for $3,310,600 of that total. [link here] In the business area, where leadership, engagement, employee motivation and entrepreneurship make their mark, there were 16, 604 [link here] books sold in 2014, up by 7% over the previous year.

In the year 1440, the printing press was invented and Johannes Gutenburg could barely monetize it, dying broke and forgotten until he was remembered almost 100 years later.

Why bring Gutenburg up?

History is littered with the bodies of failed inventors who were either too early with their innovations, too late with advocating for their work, or who got greedy, got in bed with the wrong people and died thinking of themselves as broken failures. That probably won’t happen to Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, or Sergey Brin and Larry Page, but books matter, because, after 600 years, we have finally gotten the format, the feel and look of book right. We have figured out how to monetize it and the technology to make it, sell it, market it and distribute it has experienced global, explosive exponential growth.

Authors (and many potential authors) hold the internet, content creation, free online content, and e-commerce responsible for the overall reduction in the number of book sales. Our new technology and delivery systems are blamed for the difficulty that many authors (in unpopular or “boring” genres) have in marketing and selling their books to niche audiences. Finally, the development of the social web and digital distractions on a platform initially dominated by the presence of the written word, is credited for the loss of concentration and focus that audiences appear to have in an age where the greatest product of the printing press seems to be being supplanted.

Do books, and book writing, still matter?

The savvy conflict engagement professional should write, because content matters. But the kind of writing that is done for a blog (like this one) does not have to differ entirely from the kind of writing that would be in a book, or even an e-book. The frustration comes with the fact that the categories in which peacebuilding has its roots (psychology, business, sociology, legal), have never been “bestseller” categories for the general, book buying public. The other frustration for peacebuilders comes in the fact that we are, at a human level, transitioning from one technology (printing press) to another technology (the Internet) and the rules are not set, as they will be 600 years from now.

Book writing still matters for the peacebuilder, but there are three suggestions for moving forward:

Write for a narrow niche and deepen it through working with your network that you have built offline and online. Selling a few hundred copies of a book through connections and networks is possible in a world of fractured attention spans. However, without writing for a narrow niche, all the giveaways and sweeteners won’t move units.
Use the disciplines that you’ve developed through writing blog posts, engaging with social content, creating marketing efforts and connecting with people, to sell your book. This is the most daunting piece of the process. It is like having a small start-up inside the business you’re already developing.
Set your expectations for what “success” or “failure” looks like for you. The savvy peacebuilder is savvy because they set their expectations around outcomes at a level that matches the length of their network reach. If you have worked for 4 years to build a network of 1300 people on Twitter, and you know that only 40 of those people are in the market for your book, Twitter may not be the tool to use to promote your book. However, if you only want to sell 40 books, those 40 followers may be your best customers.

Do books, and book writing, still matter?

Yes. Now more than ever.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Marketing for the Peace Builder III

There are three ways to connect with clients, customers, fans and audiences.

And in the world of digital communication, there is one basic principle that underlies all of these connections that the peacebuilder must keep in mind.

Original content creation starts with the blogging, but then moves to image creation (uploads to Slideshare), video (both live streaming and staged), audio (podcasts), webinars and more. Original content creation requires consistency, sweat equity and massive amounts of focus to get right.

Content curation starts with looking at what the Web already has as content out there, being produced by others, and then distributing that content to others in your network. Content curation requires and understanding of deep linking, mobile phone use, SEO rankings, keywords (yes, they still matter) and SEM (that’s Search Engine Management). Content curation requires an intuitive and analytic driven understanding of which platforms are just bullhorns, and which ones are targets for getting your audience’s attention, trust, and giving them value.

Content distribution starts at the intersection of content curation and content creation and requires understanding how those two intersect—and how they bisect. The fact of the matter is that many content creators are really good at distribution vial one platform (email, social, TV, direct mail, etc.) and really mediocre at many others. This is due to the fact that each distribution channel has its own rules, quirks and dramas that affect how an audience gets engaged and why, how long that audience stays engaged, and why that audience leaves.

The one basic principle the peacebuilder must keep in mind, is that creation, curation and distribution are the only ways that scale occurs in the digital realm. And when the persistent thought in a peacebuilder’s mind is “Is this doing any good?” the persistent answer, after developing in all three areas with strengths in creation, is…

“Yes.”

-Peace Be With You All-

HIT Piece 08.25.2015

I am a live streaming video fan in general and a Meerkat partisan in particular.

You probably haven’t heard of the mobile application Meerkat, though its two more popular cousins, Blab.im and Periscope.tv are getting a lot of attention from tech bloggers and online magazines. The Meerkat app “blew up” at SXSW this year because of some shenanigans with the Twitter API, which you can read about here[link]. Part of this is because live streaming video is popular right now as a way to immediately connect with public events and personalities. The other part of this is because live streaming video is the next step in the continuing disassembling of television as a content delivery mechanism.

I like the Meerkat app for many, many reasons. The top two are:

The app integrates seamlessly with Twitter and you can publicize your Meerkat streams to your Twitter followers to grow your audience on two platforms.
The app also allows you to invite others onto your stream to either “host” a show with your viewers or to be interviewed by the host of the “show.”

Now, if you are a peacebuilder in any of the conflict management spaces—from facilitation to coaching to mediation to negotiation—you can probably already see the benefits of live streaming video to grow your business practice, develop a niche following and to grow your brand.

Here are a few thoughts I have around this new intersection between peacebuilders, marketing and technology:

Live streaming a mediation or coaching session to your Twitter/Facebook followers and fans might not be the best way to ensure client confidentiality and build trust, but you might have some clients who would be willing to have their lives placed on view for you to showcase what you do in real time. This would work particularly well if those clients are connected to you as a peacebuilder online.

Live streaming samples of you working (i.e. “This is what a session looks like,” “This is me explaining my philosophy and approach to peace,” etc., etc.) would be a way to immediately get feedback from potential clients and customers around tone, approach and other areas, rather than the one sided bubble of blog writing. There’s already a person on Meerkat who streams his Tai Chi sessions and talks to followers as he’s performing.

Live streaming to build a brand presence requires maintaining the same habits that you have to in order to blog daily: Show up on schedule, on time and engage effectively. This is easier (and harder) with live video than with the more controlled spaces of Youtube, Vine, SnapChat video or any other service that allows you to edit your presentation before uploading the content. With live streaming, it happens as it happens. However, this can be a way to schedule time with another peacebuilder and build an “Oprah” type show via Meerkat that goes on the air everyday and builds a sense of consistency and relationship with viewers.

These are just three ideas I have after messing around with the Meerkat app and researching live streaming video for the last few months. I am sure that some enterprising and entrepreneurial peacebuilder will use this platform (or Blab or Periscope) to begin to explore the possibilities of live streaming for peace.

If not, maybe I’ll host my own show on Meerkat….

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] 0 to 1 for the Peacebuilder

In every industry, there are zeros and there are ones.

Zeros have the advantage, because they understand something fundamental that all of the ones who follow them do not: Innovative thinking, processes, relationships and much more, lead to dominance in the marketplace of ideas, products, processes and services. Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist, wrote about this phenomenon in his book [link here] Zero to One.

Don’t believe us?

Well, there were a lot of car companies before Henry Ford took the assembly line process apart, and re-engineered it, piece by piece. That was his “zero” innovation.

There were a lot of search engines before Google came along and developed an algorithm so that a consumer could search the Internet like a dictionary and that businesses could buy words and terms in auctions. That was Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s “zero” innovation.

There were a lot of (and there still are) gourmet chefs before Gordon Ramsey, Anthony Bourdain, and many others came along, each with their own innovative approaches (“zeros” all) and offerings for the marketplace.

In the field of peacebuilding, there are a few zeros, people who have innovated “outside of the box” in their approach and philosophy around building a peaceful world: Kenneth Cloke, Christopher Moore, Bernard Mayer and a few others, such as William Ury and Roger Fischer.

The next zero in the world of peacebuilding will be the innovator who accepts and integrates the digital landscape into peacebuilding, from content creation to platform building to gaining client’s trust through the use of data gathering and implementation tools, the field of peacebuilding—conflict resolution, mediation, arbitration, negotiation, diplomacy—must move forward in the digital world.

There are people—pioneers really—who are making the jump, from Colin Rule to Jim Melamed and even Giuseppe Leone and David Liddle. But it’s not enough.

The distance between the first mover, the zero, in the marketplace and the one, the first follower, is huge. For an example of how huge, remember that Yahoo existed well before Google and now, in both market share and influence, it is light years behind Google.

In the field of peacebuilding, the zero who innovates first to the marketplace on the building of a more peaceful world, will be light years ahead of whoever follows them, or whomever they overtake who believed that they had first mover advantage initially.

Want to find out more about the process behind being becoming a first mover in the peacebuilding marketplace?

Then download the FREE eBook from Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT), The Savvy Peace Builder by clicking the link here.

-Peace Be With You All-