Social media to define future company bonuses?

Along with the rest of the planet I received hundreds of news stories about Friday's controversial memo from Google CEO Larry Page, the general gist being 25% of every employee's bonus is reliant on successful performance in the social media space this year.

Doing the job that I do, this prompted me to have a think about whether this was a) savvy and b) fair.

I don't feel comfortable offering firm conclusions as I wasn't privy to the exact wording, backdrop and context of the memo but the following thoughts seemed to resonate as I considered the concept:

• Involving the whole business in social media, whether it is technically their job or not is smart. All too often I hear "oh marketing deal with social media", which is true but the strongest teams have allies, advocates and participants across many business functions
• Putting a solid number on the amount of bonus at stake is sensible enough, but nowhere did it get reported exactly what form "success" was going to take or what it looked like. Likely this is confidential information in this case but worth remembering if you are thinking of following in Google's footsteps
• Making the whole company financially invested in the success of a single project is a great way to get everyone pulling in the same direction and encourage cross functional collaboration
• The whole initiative feels quite broad brushed and making people accountable could be tricky. If Joe Bloggs doesn't pull his weight whilst Jane Doe works hard, is it fair to Jane if they miss out on the bonus or good to reward Joe's lack of input if they are awarded the money?

So is Larry loony or a legend? I don't know - I'd love to hear your thoughts.

At what price?

I don't know if it is the stirring effect of launching new product types or the slightly erratic indicators in the economy, but for the last few weeks our office has been abuzz with talk of pricing (just this morning I was sent this post on pricing digital content that is well worth a read); and it's not just us.

So many of the conversations I have with people nowadays, from closest friends to chance business encounters revolve around it. What will people pay? What would we pay? Are we paying too much? Have our recessionary pricing strategies had a damaging effect?

In the post  link to above, Chris Brogan advises against asking your community what they will pay, because they'll low ball it. A valid point; if you're asking, I'm negotiating because you've signalled that there's room to do so.

So how to solve our pricing dilemmas? This is by no means the only approach but it is the one I'm going to try:

1) Find out how much they are paying (competitor research, surveys, market research)
2) Then comes the painful bit - testing. To my mind, the only way you can be really sure of how much your customers will pay for something is to put together a decent message that accurately conveys the value of your product and see if people will pay the price you ask.

The pain bit comes with the fact that you are probably going to have to get this wrong a lot before you find the ideal level to generate the most profit in the long term. Ah well, no pain, no gain as I'm sure you all said as you hit the gym last month!

Marketing has got to be remarkable

Now that in and of itself isn't news. However, I was struck by just how entrenched this idea has become when I read a recent interview about web phenomenon Groupon's rejection of the Google billions.

Groupon works by getting local businesses to offer remarkable deals for a very limited time span; when enough people sign up, the seller and Groupon split the cash. For enough people to sign up, the offer has to be jaw droppingly exciting and Groupon uses this principle to select which offers it promotes (it is approached by an average of 8 sellers for every 1 promotional spot).

The contrast between this model and the conventional advertising set up could not be more extreme. For Groupon to make money, they have to be sure your product and offer make your proposition virtually impossible to refuse for your target market.

They have structured their whole business model around this principle and have refused a mammoth $6 billion from Google, confident that they can take what is currently the fastest growing company in history (they are 2 years old) and make Google's offer look like small change.

The message for marketers? Being remarkable, not just in your content but in your value proposition, your service and your offers is no longer just a way to get ahead, it is essential for your survival. The world has rebuilt itself around new rules, evolve or die.

3 ways to decide if a good idea isn't good enough

I came across a great post on HBR the other day focusing on killing off good ideas in order to concentrate your resources on a few that then come to fruition. I really liked this as an approach, perhaps because marketers are so often in a position of being idea rich and time poor, often inadvertently positioning themselves as ineffective as a result. (You've all worked with people like that - super creative types who never complete a project because they've got all wrapped up and excited by their next big idea).

So how do we decide which ideas to keep and throw our weight behind and those to let fall by the wayside?

Before I throw in my 2 pence worth, I want to make it clear that I know there are hundreds of possible ways of doing this and these are just my own, another opinion on the pile!

1) Does the idea align with your strategic objectives? Ideally all major projects should support the pillars of your annual strategy and move those lofty strategic aims forward towards a reality.
2) Can we put a dollar value on the benefit of executing the idea? I'm not saying that if we can't we shouldn't pursue it but I'd rather we could, as no idea that fits into this mould can really be a nice to have if the bottom line impact is significant.
3) Who would your team be? Again, you don't always want to avoid pursuing ideas that involve working with people who are likely to let you down and make your life more difficult. Sometimes it is unavoidable; yet I'd allow it to rule things out if confronted with a list of things with similar possible levels of benefit to the business.

3 Tips For Better Content Creation

We all know that creating content and “publishing our way in” is the way forward right? Marketing gurus who espouse the benefits of content marketing are ten a penny, however as with many things (social media being a classic example) the theory and the execution can often fail to match up due to real world pressures and variables.

For what its worth, here’s a few ideas on how to make sure your content does what you want it to do, rather than negatively impacting your business:

• Create a content creation process map – understanding what all the steps are for successful content creation and how long they take will highlight when you’re trying to cut corners on production because you are busy. Make sure if you are using a variety of different types of content or different mediums, you have a map for each.

• Invest in relevance and value for your customer – I’m not necessarily talking about an expensive all singing all dancing market research project but you do need to spend time making sure you understand what your customer would find most useful. Easy starting points? Look at what already exists that is popular in your space, run a short survey across your database, call some of your key accounts and talk to them.

• Test and record – all too often (and I know I am guilty of this) we form opinions based on what we think we know, rather than making judgements with all the data to hand. Content has so many variables; you need to try altering one at a time and recording the test results faithfully so you can create a detailed picture. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking “My last podcast got no attention, neither did the first one I did – my market must hate podcasts”.

It's all about the people

My initial management training was conducted by a wise man who told me, "It's all about the people; you get the right people and there's very little you can't do, you get the wrong people and you can't do anything".

Time and time again this has been proved correct, both in my own team and in the wider business. Selecting the right people to join your team is an art, but one that can be learned and perfected over time; but what do you do about other people's people?

What can we do when our colleagues make poor hires that impact us and our teams?

1) Understand what a good hire is - This isn't just about who you like to work with or what is right for your function. Make sure you really understand what makes a successful team member for other functions before you start judging other people's decisions. Ask team leaders what they look for in a candidate and why; it may not be your ideal but that doesn't make it wrong for the organisation.

2) Say something - Too often we don't mention our fears to our colleagues about their questionable hiring decisions because we are scared of upsetting them or giving them the impression that we think they are bad at their jobs. Often when I've had a brave moment and said something, the person I am talking to has just looked relieved and been glad that someone else observed the same thing and therefore had the confidence to deal with the issue.

3) Restrict their involvement - Reach out to these poor hires only for the things no one else in the organisation is capable of doing. Leverage your own support network to cover the gaps and minimise the risks posed by that individual to the business as a whole.