[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-

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/

[Opinion] Marketing for the Peace Builder II

Peacebuilders spend a lot of time in the non-digital world, at the conflict resolution table, making connections, reframing ideas, challenging the status quo and creating the space for resolution between parties in conflict.

There are tools out there right now, blogging, podcasting, video creation, content curation tools, and many more that make it easy for the peacebuilder to do all of these things in public, in real time, creating change right now.

The issue is not the tools, or even serving the clients through using the tools.

The issue is shifting the field based mindset, philosophy and thought processes around personal/brand self-promotion, client self-determination, putting an idea “out there” and standing up for it.

Even if the client, the audience, or the peers disagree.

The issue is fear.

The issue is courage.

The issue is in the self, rather than in the tools.

Digital = fearless.

Who’s ready to be fearless today?

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Original Intent

Whether people are debating the significance origin stories found in documents, or critiquing where innovations and progress ends up once other people (with other ideas) get involved, the search for “original intent” shows up.

The first reason that determining original intent is a fallacy and—to a certain degree—a way to either shut down conflict and force accommodation with whatever the new idea or innovation is, or it serves as a way to critique progress without really having any skin in the game.

The second reason that original intent is fallacious as an argument against progress, is that no one—and particularly not the initial founders or designers of an idea, a concept, a product or an innovation—had any idea what the future would hold.

Which is why many arguments for the continuation of the Second Amendment (or any other amendment in the Constitution) tend to be ignored. The original intent of the founders who wrote the amendment in the first place, was greatly influenced by their immediate past—and their current situation, which is now shrouded in the past of US history. The writers of the Constitution couldn’t have imagined steam power or railroads spanning the country, much less the Internet, AR-15’s or the specific geopolitical strife that lead to the decision to go to war in Vietnam.

Instead of focusing on original intent and trying to determine how that intent matches up to situations that did not exist in the past when that intent was originally developed, perhaps focusing on original principles–mission, vision, values, goals–would be a better route to success.

This is a particularly salient point as we begin to really think about what kind of Internet we want to have, even as the Internet changes into something that it’s original founders, designers and developers could never have imagined.

-Peace With You All-

[Advice] How to Read an Analytics Report

If you don’t measure it, it hasn’t happened.

At least that’s the clarion call for many in the worlds of Big Data, analytics and the growing field of measuring content marketing.

But for the blogging peacebuilder, just the mention of the term “analytics” can generate beads of cold sweat. The same term can bring on a cold sweat in others as well.

But there are three simple types of reports that, when accessed, can make the peacebuilding blogger understand better what is going on with their posts, their curated content and their social distribution efforts.

Social Distribution Analytics Reports—Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and many other platforms, allow any user to look at how their posts, likes, and updates are tracking across the platform itself. These reports are very insular, and only reveal what happens with an audience member, a customer or a client inside the platform of choice. For instance, in the case of Facebook, if a blogging peacebuilder is posting regularly from their blog to Facebook, they can track the organic reach (free) and the paid reach (paid) of each item that they post. And the data on it’s users is so extensive, that any peacebuilding blogger could spend days staring at the data.
Blog Platform Analytics Reports—No matter what content creation and distribution platform the peacebuilding blogger uses, from WordPress to Typepad, each platform measures how often each post is opened, read and even what times during the days of the weeks this action happens. In WordPress and Blogger platforms, the data tracking users and readers comes bundled with access to Google Analytics (which we’ll talk about below). Where the platform based analytics reports really come in handy, are when the peacebuilding blogger wants to launch a plug-in that might serve to provide more functionality for her user/audience member.
Google Analytics—The 800 lb gorilla on the analytics block for many, many bloggers, marketers and others, are analytics provided by Google. The reports, measurement, trends and other tools inside of Google are deeper even than the data offered through Facebook. It’s relatively easy to get either a plug-in for a WordPress site or get access to Google Analytics by setting up a blog in Blogger before had, with a unique tracking code that stays on your website. When reading a Google Analytics report, the amount of data provided by Google to the peacebuilder can be incredibly overwhelming. The two areas initially that we would recommend the peacebuilding blogger to focus on would be the Audience Overview section and the Uses Flow report. Audience Overview in Google Analytics provides the peacebuilding blogger with analysis and tracking around from where audience members are accessing their content (mobile vs. desktop), how long they are staying on the site before they leave (bounce rate) and whether the website visitors are “new” or “returning.” Report generation is relatively easy (just set up the ability to get a report based on specific parameters (new vs. returning/mobile vs. desktop inside of Google Analytics) and Google will email the report to you.

Getting analytics reports is not the main problem in reading an analytics report. The main problem for any blogger, is figuring out how to best convert visitors to your site and your content to actual sales. Analytics reports that measure marketing efforts (video creation, blogging, ads, etc.) provide data that the peacebuilding blogger can use to determine where to best place their time and energy.

If it’s not being measured, it hasn’t happened. The follow-up to that statement is that if it hasn’t been acted on after it’s been measured, then all the measurement in the world is just thrashing and hiding.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] How to Curate Content

There are—literally—millions of blogs, covering everything from news to entertainment.

99% of those blogging efforts generate no revenue for the creators and publishers of the content.

With all this noise—but seemingly no fire—what are the two ways that a peacebuilding blogger can drive traffic to their blog, without seeming to “sell out” in the process?

Advertising is the first and easiest way. But the battle over banner ads is not yet complete, and the click through rate on Internet advertising in general is beyond merely abysmal—it’s downright laughable. However, there are some benefits to advertising and allowing ads to display on a peacebuilding blog: The revenue generated through clicks and eyeballs has generated some revenues for bloggers in the past.

But they got in early on the advertising game and now the distance between them and the peacebuilder currently looking to generate revenues after three years of blogging, is the same as the distance between Google (0) and it’s nearest search competitors, Bing and Yahoo (1).

Curating content from others is the second and not so easy way. Curating content from other sources can be fraught with legal (and ethical) conundrums, but the fact of the matter is, with the definition of content having now expanded to audio (podcasts) and visual (images and videos) the amount of content both siloed on platforms (i.e. Facebook Video or Tumblr blogs) has exploded exponentially. This offers opportunities for the savvy peacebuilder to access a wide variety of content based on her audience’s interests, and to offer that content as an intermediary.

A gatekeeper, if you will.

Here are four platforms to begin the process of content curation:

Flipboard—We personally use the magazine and article aggregator, Flipboard to create magazine based content off of what we have on our blog already and to share what is being published other places. Check out what we’ve done by clicking here. The platform is easy to use and we’ve even turned others onto it…

Twitter—Far from being merely a cesspool (it can be) or a noise factory (it can also be that) Twitter serves as a place to share links and engage with content creators around their content. With the current changes to the platform around retweeting and sharing, the ability to truly engage effectively with shared content has exploded.

RSS Feeds—Yes, we know that Google killed its RSS reader and everybody lamented. But for curation, particularly blog based curation with no middle man of another platform, RSS feeds can be a goldmine of sharing others content. Every blog has an RSS feed, but the readers of the feeds are few and far between. The savvy peacebuilder has two choices: Either go out to every blog individually and crawl the sites for the best content to share, or get a reader service such as Feedly (free) or Buffer (paid) and add websites with active RSS feeds.

WP plug-ins—If the savvy peacebuilder with a WordPress blog wants to develop curation on their site directly, then there are a couple of plug-ins to consider. WP RSS Aggregator is the most popular one by far, followed by Super RSS Reader. Both of these solutions to content curation require the savvy peacebuilder to be in the backend of her website, ensuring that the blog theme integrates well with the plug-ins and that the posts, feeds and pages are all delineated properly. But once set-up, this solution offers the most value, as it drives readers of the content the savvy peacebuilder has selected back to their website, rather than the original content creator’s site.

Content curation is not for every blogger (or peacebuilder) and the benefits in increased credibility, trust and value don’t accrue immediately (unlike the risk of advertising, which may create frustration as an assured hit, turns out to be a regular miss) but when they do, there is great benefit.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] How to Make an Image Quote

Then, there are visual quotes.

One of the few remarked upon trends in social media (started on Facebook way back in the good old days of 2006-2007) is the overwhelming presence—and virality—of visualized quotes attributed to famous (and not so famous) people.

As we stated on Monday, the Internet is evolving into a medium of seeing and hearing, versus reading and as such, the words of a person (preferably a famous one, we might add) strike a cord with individual followers as visual images.

Many peacebuilders, bloggers and others don’t even think that a quippy line in a blog post can gain some sought after viral traction through the process of creating an image based quote.

There are three tools that the typical peacebuilding blogger can use to create these images:

Canva— For the peacebuilding blogger with an intermediate level of comfort and brand knowledge, Canva.com is the best resource right now on the Internet. The platform is the web based photo editing and design system that allows anybody to upload a photo, slap some text over it (or next to it) and then download it as a JPG, or PNG, file. There are about 50 different fonts inside of Canva, along with vector images, different color backgrounds, and even preformatted text images. Plus, it’s backed by the venture capitalist and brand evangelist Guy Kawasaki.
Adobe Photoshop—For peacebuilding bloggers with a little more range in their toolbox (and the time to get image manipulation done) the old stand-by is Photoshop. Now exclusively subscription and cloud based, Photoshop is so deep and so rich with tools for photo editing, layering, filtering and designing that we can’t describe them all here. Plus, with Adobe’s move to being all cloud based, storage of large image files just became less cost prohibitive along with increased security and access for the end-user. Just go check them out.
Powerpoint + Stock photography—For the peacebuilding blogger who looks at Canva and gets overwhelmed, or for the peacebuilder who can’t even begin to imagine navigating the intricacies of any programs in the Adobe Suite of products, there is the wonder of Powerpoint. Now hear us out: Inside of Powerpoint, one has the ability to upload stock photos, edit out backgrounds and add in other backgrounds, and to add text. It’s a simple and user friendly addition to the Powerpoint list of tools, and with Office 365 being web-based now, as well as Windows 10 coming, Powerpoint is only going to get richer as a tool for designers.

The real question, of course is “What if I don’t have anything inspiring, quippy, or even relatively smart to turn into a quote for my audience to spread around?”

The answer to that question is, “Then don’t create an image quote.”

But, here’s the thing: Eventually, after about 6 to 8 months of steady blogging, we absolutely guarantee that you will turn a phrase worthy of being put next to your face and worthy of being shared around social media platforms.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] How to Write a Blog Post

It begins and ends with writing.

Yes, we live in an overwhelmingly visual culture, dominated by ads, images, videos, emojis and other vehicles that serve to entertain, inform, persuade, convince and convert.

But making an argument, and taking a stand still matters.

As does commitment and consistency, and the ability to be alone, (a la Virginia Woolf) and take some time to contemplate, think and formulate.

Blogging—long form content creation—still matters, even in a visually choked world. Many professionals would like to write, but are still trapped by the image that they have of writing from grade school.

Here are 5 steps to actually writing a blog post:

Come up with an idea—“I have nothing to write about” is the worst phrase in the English language. Or possibly any other language. With the rare exception, people do not think in images (unless we are counting the actual visual alphabet of a language as an image itself) and so words must dominate. When you can’t develop an idea, what you’re really saying is “I don’t want to think.”
Write down a few key words—We are avoiding the term “outline” but visual cueing and memory are still based in words. Write down a few and save them for later.
Go back to the key words—Before opening up that Word document, or the lid to that Mac Book, go back to the key words you wrote. Begin to craft a story around them. Yes, “Once upon a time…” is an appropriate opening, but a better one is more metaphorical. Comparisons work, because the human mind needs to analyze the world of the unknown, against what it already knows.
Don’t procrastinate—The biggest writing killer is procrastination. Typically based in fear, procrastination sneaks up and robs ambition, the desire to do better, and the will to put words on paper. Nike’s motto rings true here.
Step back from what you’ve written—Trust us: Never hit the “publish” button right away. Yes, blogging has some credibility issues, but that has more to do with how the process is used and what the process is used for, than the actual process itself. Writing builds ideas, and a platform, but the audience wants to be treated with a semblance of trust. Misspelled words, poor comma placement, and on and on, distract the audience. Plus, the heat of the writing arena has to cool so that soem ideas can be killed, and resurrected, if need be.

Writing a blog post is not difficult. The underlying meaning behind writing, publishing and distributing that blog post is diffcult.

Writing represents a commitment to the written word. Writing represents standing in a place and owning up to an idea, a concept, and a story that others may not agree with. And without consistent writing, we don’t know how you develop all those other shiny platforms, from podcasting to YouTube videos.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Podcast] Virtual Ghettos – The Earbud_U Minute

Ghettos are popping up all over the virtual place.

In the physical world, the ghetto began as a way to segregate Jewish populations from other populations in Italy and all throughout the rest of Europe. Then, if Wikipedia is to be believed, ghettos came to the US, first as a way to segregate the Irish and Italian immigrants, then as a way to separate African Americans from predominantly White populations.

With that in mind, look down at the screen of your smartphone. How many apps do you have?

How many different neighborhoods, or ghettos, do they represent?

In the virtual space of the Internet, information may want to be free, but people apparently want to be crowded into virtual cities and neighborhoods—with all of the separation, regulation and virtual social norming as informal policy.

As we innovate further—and as digital natives move further and further away from the ghettos that digital immigrants seem comfortable in—the question we must ask ourselves is: Which comes first, the regulation or the innovation?

We have to figure this out as a global culture, because physical ghettos lead not only to segregation, biases and prejudices (which may prove to be minor annoyances in the virtual space) but also to poverty, lack of access to resources and reduced opportunity (which may prove to be even more damaging in the virtual space that in the physical world).

Conflicts between those in the virtual ghettos, those in the virtual suburbs and those on the virtual frontier need to be addressed by people who have experience with emotional intelligence, active listening and strong facilitation ability.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Marketing for the Peace Builder

Peace builder’s have to be willing to get vulnerable in their marketing.

In a professional field, dominated by people familiar with—and comfortable with—the way that the world worked under Industrial Revolution rules, this can be a difficult transition.

Peace builders of all kinds—conflict resolution professionals, mediators, trainers, attorneys, social workers, and on and on—are facing world where permission is no longer granted, and where technology gives anyone the tools to change the rules.

It is important to note, however, that perfection, exactitude and quality are thought of in different ways now. A woman at a conference last week asked us a question: “How can you write a blog post that’s ‘just good enough’ when that is out there and it could show the quality of your work to a potential client?”

Good question.

The answer is three fold:

The line from “good enough” to “perfect” has nothing to do with a potential client’s perception of the work. It has to do with the author’s perception of what they have written or created. Your “good enough” and our “perfect” are going to have different meanings. And thus draw different clients, with different motives.
In a world of endless noise and multiple information options, the higher work is not to be bound to a mythical idea of “quality” based on rules that no longer apply. Instead, quality is now defined as “being out there in a world full of noise with commitment, consistency and persistence.”
The audience decides or the audience doesn’t, but the audience has expanded by multiple factors. No longer are peace builders bound to the television, billboards, editorials, word-of-mouth referrals, and praying that the next client will come in. Now peace builders have an expanded audience to whom they can appeal (see the Long Tail for more of this idea) and with 6.5 billion people on the planet, the audience is global, not local.

Before doing any of this, before writing one blog post, or making one video, peace builders have to be willing to throw away fear, the need for assurances and their preconceived expectations, and dance with vulnerability, to market effectively.

We’ve got an e-book describing our journey through this minefield. Download it by following the link here. And it’s free.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Strategy] Preparing for a Keynote

Preparing for a speech—any kind of speech—is something that is conceived of as so challenging that very few want to do it.

But here’s a few tips to get started:

Don’t start with the speech.

Instead, start blogging. Once you get into the habit of publishing written content everyday (or every other day) then you’ll be able to work through arguments that you may want to use for developing a speech later on.

Listen to podcasts from people in parallel industries.

You know who are good presenters?

Comedians.

Forget the funny jokes for a moment.

There is nothing more nerve wracking than standing in front of a crowd of intoxicated people at nine o’clock at night and having to tell them jokes.

Podcasting is a way to discover beats, pauses and the power of the human voice. Also process and procedures. Jay Mohr’s podcast as well as Marc Maron’s are good ones to begin with.

Write the way that you watch a movie or a TV show.

Your speech should be in the form of a three act structure. Just like a film or a TV show:

Act One: Introduce the problem.
Act Two: Expand on the problem.
Act Three: Offer the solution and summarize.

Don’t give it all away. Lead your audience into the problem, but know what you’re speech is for.

A call to action should be obvious, but should also exist in the “white spaces” of people’s perceptions about what you said.

The best orators, from dictators to corporate titans, allow the listeners in the crowd to “fill in the blanks” and empower them to take the action that the speaker wants them to.

-Peace Be With You All-