You’d have thought Durex Condoms would always play it safe, but their latest Facebook marketing campaign has turned into a bit of a flop thanks to a remarkable lack of planning (or should that be foreplay?)

The trouble begins with a curious “insight” that some couples don’t think to buy condoms in advance, but they are foresighted enough to install an app from iTunes allowing them to request an emergency delivery as long as they have previously ensured they will only be in coitus in a city where the service exists.

Of course, there’s no way Reckitt Benckiser could promise rapid deliveries of “SOS Condoms” to every corner of the world, so they ran a vote on a microsite, promoted via Facebook, inviting would-be consumers to choose the city where they would like the emergency service to next be available.

In the true spirit of the empowered consumer, voters were left to their own devices to pick any place in the world rather than having to select from a shortlist of pre-qualified cities. Quite naturally, this resulted in some online jokers looking for ways to spice up the outcome. And, you guessed it, the most requested location for SOS Condom deliveries was Batman, a city in Turkey.

Well done Batman! You amassed more votes than Paris, London and New York combined, and your residents can now look forward to breathlessly opening the door to fresh supplies less than one hour after ordering. Whether the service is now off the ground is unclear but we can only hope that uptake is strong from Turkey’s luckiest amorous couples.

Durex has conceded that its campaign was hijacked and has closed the voting, possibly prematurely. I’m sure its intentions were good (or should that be bona fide?), but this is a timely reminded to all marketers to carefully think through the implications of allowing full crowd ownership over the outcomes of marketing campaigns. Surrendering control to the social web is sometimes a smart tactic, but without sufficient attention to detail and crisis planning your next activity might not be heading for a happy ending.

Many years ago I was privileged to learn improvisation skills at a week-long business retreat. My teacher, Neil Mullarkey of The Comedy Store, has remained a good friend to me over the years and the concepts he taught me have stayed fresh in my mind. The recent emergence of more social businesses—where staff can openly share ideas and opinions through online platforms—has made me revisit these improvisation principles and ask how they could be applied in the digital workplace.

Improvisation, where actors play out a scene without a script or rehearsal, relies on a few core skills that we often forget in the midst of a busy workplace. But their usefulness within a social business seems to me beyond doubt. After all, in the modern business world we are simply the actors, and the workplace our stage.

So, here are some of my preliminary thoughts on how improvisation skills may help you become a better social player within your organisation:

Active Listening: The improviser who fails to listen to those around him will soon come unstuck. Every actor on the stage is there to ‘offer’ something to the others to help the scene develop. By always listening carefully to what’s being said we can make more informed, spontaneous contributions that build on the topic and take it in a positive direction. The same applies online; don’t spend all your time talking, it’s far more valuable to listen intently and only speak up when you have something useful to add.

Not Being Clever: In order to be natural and ‘in the moment’, improvisers are taught the importance of not trying to be clever. In fact, the last thing you want to do is to try to be clever as it both makes things difficult for the other actors and can destroy the authenticity and naturalness of what you say. Following this advice online too makes a lot of sense. There are no prizes for being a know-it-all and most of us can contribute more value by building on the ideas of others rather than seeking to kill off discussions with our genius.

Relax and Have Fun: In improvisation, the most entertaining and memorable scenes happen when the actors are “in the zone”, loving the experience. They’re looking to slip into a mental state which psychologists call ‘flow’ where they are fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus to the task at hand. The same should apply in our work lives. When we truly focused on something that we feel is worthwhile we feel energized and able to actively engage our whole brains. If we can find this same state when using a social intranet or following an online discussion between colleagues, we should be better placed to make a full, valued contribution.

Don’t Judge Others: Suspending our natural tendency to pass judgement on others is essential in improvisation. Of course, we should try to understand others and empathise with them, but judging their contributions is an unnecessary distraction and energy drain. Likewise, we can help the social workplace run smoothly by allowing people to express themselves freely without fear of being judged or criticised. By creating a trusted environment, we are each more likely to bring our best ideas to the fore so others can build on them.

Yes and…: One of the easiest exercises that Neil taught me is to build on what has been said before. We’re trained from an early age at school and college to spot flaws in others’ arguments and we can help unpick this habit by simply starting every response with “Yes, and…” This modest phrase helps force us into a collaborative mindset where we build on what has gone before rather than shooting it down with the usual “No, but…” response. The next time you see a comment on the social intranet that you disagree with, try looking for the positives in the idea and building constructively with a “Yes , and…” reply.

Thrive In the Ambiguity: By its very definition, improvisation requires actors to enter a world where they are completely out of control of the situation. If you try to drive the agenda, another person can snatch it away and drag you in an unexpected direction. Life in a social workplace is very much like this too, with discussions and comments ebbing and flowing to the tune of the crowd’s sentiment. Learning to welcome and indeed thrive in this uncertainty is an essential skill for today’s employees.

In a world now shaped by distributed voices and opinions, we’re all learning new skills to help us survive the modern workplace. But perhaps we can learn most from some of the oldest tricks in the book, as used by actors for generations to create, innovate and entertain.

How could this approach help you? All comments to begin “Yes, and…” please.

When writer’s block strikes sometimes the best thing to do is to walk away and formulate a new plan on how to avoid an idea logjam in future.

But there’s good news at hand. Here’s my super-simple, no-nonsense approach that could make a huge difference to your daily content marketing results:

1. PLAN IT
Set aside 15 minutes at the end of each working day to think about tomorrow’s content plan. Create some quiet space where you can reflect on your goals, what seems to be working for you, and explore content areas you’ve not yet developed.
Your goal is to come up with just one new idea that you can put into action tomorrow.
Remember, you have just 15 distraction-free minutes to do this. You don’t need to develop the idea; just jot down your thoughts, maybe draft a blog title or note down a few sites you’d like to research to refine your idea.

2. FORGET IT
Store your idea notes somewhere safe. I leave my written notes under my closed laptop lid so I find them when I next turn it on. Now, go and do something completely different, like living your real life, having fun with friends or enjoying your favourite sport.
This stage is all-important. It allows the most powerful parts of your brain to start working their magic.
If your ‘Plan It’ stage was sufficiently focussed and intense, your brain will subconsciously begin processing your idea, making new connections and developing it for when your rational, logical thinking brain needs to step back in.
Sleep well, tomorrow’s going to be a great day!

3. CREATE IT
The next morning you already know what your first job is going to be. Set aside the first working hour of your day, when your body is fresh and your brain at its most alert, to bring your content idea to life.
Your aim is to have published some original content, either live or scheduled to go out later, before the hour is up.
This may require you to create another distraction-free space so you can focus on producing the best content you can. If it takes less than an hour, great! But if it’s going to take longer, your idea was either too ambitious or you’ve not knuckled down properly to the task.
When you’ve published your original content your day can now begin, safe in the knowledge that writer’s block cannot strike.

Now do it!

Try this simple approach for a couple of weeks. You have to be disciplined and strict with yourself; reading emails or tidying your desk do not count as focussed content creation time!

After a fortnight, you decide if this is working for you or not. But give it at least two weeks. It takes both time and practice to instil new habits and adjust to working at highly productive levels.

And please let me know how you get on. Has your content creation benefitted from this working pattern or do you think you have a better approach?

Is it just me, or does Apple’s current iPad advertising bear a startling resemblance to rival Microsoft’s “Life Without Walls” ad campaign of almost five years ago?

Of course, not every idea can be completely new. But it does make me a little sad to see this, another example of Apple’s innovative streak fading away.

I also like their great customer service.

But what I like most of all is their openness and generosity; two key ingredients for start-up success on the social web.

It’s these attributes that led Buffer to sharing the pitch deck they used to secure a $500,000 investment into their start-up, as well as the thinking process behind the slides.

We can learn a lot from the simplicity of Buffer’s pitch, as well as their use of compelling ratios and tangible proof of the traction their business was gaining.

Read the full story at OnStartups.com or flick through the slides below:

This is the entrance door to a bistro.

What’s the easiest option for the bistro owner: fix the door so customers cam come in easily or put up a sign telling them how they should use it?

I know which option customers would choose. And we all know which option the bistro owner should avoid.

Silly mistakes like this are common in business.

Does your business serve your customers or do you mistakenly demand that they serve you?

First up, what is a negative keyword? A negative keyword is any word or phrase that you do not want to associate with your business. Let’s imagine we’re running a hotel, Frost Mansion, that offers luxury spa retreats for adults. Your guests pay handsomely to stay at your hotel because they enjoy the calm, child-free environment, together with likeminded grown-ups. It’s pretty clear that you don’t want your hotel to attract groups of children. In fact the last thing you want is a family with kids turning up with a reservation ready to destroy the peace and tranquillity.

Here are two examples of how you might describe your hotel, the first is a fairly safe bet, while the second presents an awkward ‘negative keyword’ challenge:

Unwittingly, the inclusion of the word ‘child’ in the second example could, in some circumstances, lead to your hotel becoming discovered by someone searching for luxury spa retreats with children. And while the major search engines are getting better at understanding the semantic meaning of phrases like “child-free”, until they perfect this there’s a risk that even a mention of a negative keyword could have the opposite to the intended effect.

This exact same discipline is needed with updates to social networks. There’s no point optimising your website and display ads if you don’t apply the same rigour to your social media updates. Consider the difference that the following tweets might have on the type of business your hotel could attract:

The first tweet will show up in searches for ‘weekend hotel offer children’, potentially attracting the wrong type of clientele. And don;t think that including the phrase “sorry no children” will work all the time; people scan online content and routinely gloss over important details like this.

In contrast, the second tweet avoids this risk completely by excluding negative keywords relating to children.

To turn the negatives into positives is easy. Here’s my 7 step process for making sure your social updates avoid the pitfalls:

1. Define all the positive things you want your brand to be famously associated with. If your brand is well-established you should have this list already in your defined brand essence or value propositions. (e.g. words like premium, quality and luxury may feature in our Frost Mansion example)
2. Prune back the positives lists to the most important aspects that differentiate your brand within its sector, grouping into categories where it helps. Make sure every word really deserves its place on the positives list
3. Now define the things you don’t want to become famous for; these are your negatives. To prevent this from becoming an extremely long list stick to topics and themes that could reasonably apply to your industry sector but which you don’t want to become associated to your brand (e.g. Frost mansion would want to avoid words like cheap, bargain, discount and, of course, children)
4. Refine your negatives list, removing duplicates and making sure you’ve covered all the major bases. Be creative with your thinking; it’s better to agree on the negatives now than to leave any ambiguity that might create uncertainty later.
5. You may spot some groups or categories of negatives. If so, group together synonyms into clusters, each representing a major theme area that you wish to avoid becoming associated with.
6. Now share your positive and negative lists with all customer-facing staff, explaining the importance of repeatedly using the positive words and the danger of using the negatives
7. Update your social media biographies, avatars and content plan to eradicate all negative keywords and maximise the use of positive keywords. Editing recent posts may be advisable if you’ve used lots of negatives previously. Be sure to use the same negatives across your entire online marketing plan including SEO

To help instil adoption of the new keyword list, it may help to run a fun competition amongst staff to find the most creative ways of using positive keywords. I’ve even seen a tongue-in-cheek Wall of Shame with mugshots of community managers who have accidentally dropped a negative into one of their updates or comments!

But most importantly, make using the lists an enjoyable challenge; you’ll be amazed how much fun you can have trying to find ways to dodge the negatives and accentuate the positives.

The big idea behind command centres like this is to provide an at-a glance view of interesting things happening on the social web. In Microsoft’s case this equates to monitoring their own accounts across a variety of channels as well as any trending social chatter about selected products and services,

In reality though, having a whole bank of screens—I’ve seen as many as twenty—creates a wall of data that is sometimes very hard to analyse and understand without an army of community managers and data analysts. Unless you’re running a presidential election or overseeing a high-profile public event with millions of viewers, the chances are an oversized command centre may eventually prove as useful as an inflatable dartboard.

There’s is, however, a different purpose that a wall of screens can serve, and that’s to create a focal point for the company’s social media listening and response activities. For Microsoft, the monitors you see above help remind staff and executives that there’s a world outside of the corporate headquarters. Making a public show that you’re listening to the chatter and working hard to engage with customers in real-time sends a powerful signal across the organisation. This was the guiding principle behind Nokia’s social visualiser Agora (watch video), which was placed in public areas like staff canteens and thoroughfares within their office locations.

Of course, the Social Command Centre isn’t a new idea. Many other companies including Gatorade, Salesforce, Dell and NVIDIA have all publicly showcased monitor-laden operations centres. But for many the question remains, is this actually a useful tool for improving the effective use of social media marketing, a cheap way to inject outside influence onto an internal organisational culture or just an extravagant way to lend social media a much-needed air of credibility?

What do you think?

The longer you work in any specialist field the more susceptible you become to placing trust in tried-and-tested rules and principles.

Take the well-known fact that content placed on a website above the fold (that is in the top portion of the screen,  visible to all when the page loads) performs better than stuff below the fold. Everybody  knows that, right? Yes, but it’s not entirely true.

What used to work in the days of PCs and Internet Explorer sometimes doesn’t apply in the era of tablets, smartphones and personalised apps. Today’s web users are well-versed in scrolling up and down pages; it’s a completely natural gesture on a touchscreen device and nearly every modern mouse features a handy scrolling wheel or touchpad.

But beyond the technology changes, savvy surfers simply no longer behave as predictably as in the past. What many would consider a textbook position to put a call-to-action, high on the page, above the fold, may sometimes deliver substantially better results if placed lower down the page or after additional information to motivate a click has appeared first.

To understand this you need to appreciate the context of the decision you are asking your site visitors to take. If the buying decision is complex or needs to be carefully considered, today’s surfers are extremely tolerant of supporting information like comparison charts, videos and customer references. And so it really doesn’t matter where the final call-to-action sits, as long as the right amount of supporting information can be accessed easily and quickly to enable a decision to be made. Requiring a visitors to make a few downwards swipes or to hunt briefly for the buying button is no longer automatically a barrier to success. In UI design context is king…

Add to this the added complexity that comes from people viewing pages on a multitude of different screens and devices, anything from a 2 inch phone to an 84inch 3D TV, and the rich variety of delivery platforms from internet browsers to niche applications, and you have the perfect recipe for some very confused, sore-brained web designers.

One solution now in widespread use is to feature small, floating content boxes that remain on screen and slide as the reader scrolls through the page. These moving panels can ensure key navigation components or calls to action remain easily accessible. But they also carry a distraction overhead so test them carefully to verify that the navigation benefits outweigh any attention interference they may create.

As I explained in a recent post, the facilities we have for testing different design hypotheses are better than ever. Simply ramming a primary call-to-action down your visitors’ throats as soon as they land on your site may not give the best results today. Of course, your call-to-action needs to be visible, distinctive and worded to elicit action, but never assume there’s only one best place for it to live. That’s old school thinking, a dangerous path to tread in a world of constant change,

So have some fun, think differently and explore some alternatives. With a little intelligent testing and creativity you could open up a whole new world of engagement in our scroll-happy world!

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