High Tech Connect

Jay Baer and Amber Naslund just published a book call The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter & More Social and, as you can divine from the title, a good part of their book as to do with social media.

Fortunately for you and me, Baer and Nasland practice what they preach and are offering the first chapter of their book as a free download on their Facebook fan page.

One area the authors delve into is the role of social media in a crisis. Many of our contractors have ample experience helping clients through a crisis and even have some experience with using social media in a crisis. Our own experience is that social media doesn’t really change best practices, but it does change the pace of response and the number of tools available to a communicator. Here’s Baer and Naslund’s list:

Acknowledge the crisis. Most people who are in a relationship should understand this one. If your spouse has a problem, then don’t waste your time telling aforementioned spouse there isn’t a problem.

Fight social media fire with social media water. In other words, fight the fight where the fight is happening.

Be sorry. That doesn’t require an explanation, does it?

Create a FAQ. This is a great time management technique and a great way to make sure the communications team is on the same page.

Build a pressure-relief valve. Make sure the public has a way to vent their frustrations…

Know when to take it offline.  …Up to a point. Don’t be the one of own and operate the forum that’s all about punishing your client.

Arm your army. Good communications start at “home” so to speak, and a good tool is only as good as how widely it’s distributed. Make your your entire communications team is well-equipped with the best information tools.

Learn your lessons. Capture, in real time and in retrospective, what you learn and how you’ll apply it next time. Next time? Yeah, there will be a next time.

Clients: Can’t live with them. Can’t pay the mortgage without them. It isn’t easy and that’s why it’s called work.

One communications consultant I know likens the discipline as that like working as a veterinarian. The vet deals with animals ranging from the parakeet to the potbellied pit and the myriad of dog and cat breeds in between. Here’s the best part: None of the vet’s patients can tell the vet where it hurts, how bad it hurts or, in general, what’s wrong. And that’s why some people maintain it’s harder to become a veterinarian than a medical doctor.

Do you see any similarity with clients? Let’s not go there.

Smashing Magazine, one of our regular reads on the web, recently ran an article entitled, Turning All Clients Into Dream Clients (or Common Client Difficulties) and you should take a look. In a nutshell, here’s their advice:

• Doesn’t Know What They Want
• Feels Left Out of Process
• Changes Mind Midway
• Doesn’t Understand Web Design
• Doesn’t Provide Enough Information
• Expectations Are Too High
• Struggles to Pay on Time

Complain, complain, complain.

Look: Here’s my point: You are working, for the most part, in the communications business and, by definition, are supposed to be better a communicator than your clients. That’s why they hire you in the first place. All the complaints listed above are just the table stakes required for you to even think about playing the game at the big table with the high rollers. If what Smashing magazine has outline above is the stuff that makes you crazy, then you need to get with a career counselor before you waste any more of your precious time … or that of the clients. Really.

What do you think?

Bless you, Ogilvy, for creating true art in advertising and reminding us it’s never too late to make our dreams come true. WOW.

Did you feel that? That sudden surge and rumble? We did. And, it may not just be here in Silicon Valley. The whole economy might have just turned the corner.

Business at High Tech Connect is up, up, up and, apparently, we aren’t the only one. Online freelance marketplace Elance just released its Q4 2010 highlights and is reporting both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter growth — during a quarter that is normally slow.

For the fourth calendar quarter of 2010, Elance reports employers spent $27M through its service for freelance work. Compared to the previous year, that’s a 44% increase.

As if that isn’t impressive enough, here’s the kicker: Growth from Q3 to the normally slower Q4 was 11%. Let’s be sure we see that: During Q4, normally the slowest quarter of the year, the spend on freelancers through Elance grew 11% compared to Q3.  Thanksgiving? Christmas? Bah, Humbug! Perhaps Dickens’ Christmas Carol gets turned upside down this year and the best gift we could get is the chance to work.

At High Tech Connect our consultant placement business is booming — so much so I had to cancel my planned Week Off this week. (It’s far more fun to make magic for my clients than tackle neglected closets and household repairs.)

You can’t help yourself. Communications professionals, by definition, must manage information overload.

You use all the right tools: filters, aggregation, synthesis, summary, etc. And sometimes it’s easy to forget that “normal” people don’t share your media consumption habits. Along with organization and creativity and experience, your ability to synthesize massive amounts of information is one of your most important “value adds” to your clients.  And protecting your clients from information overload is a very valuable service you provide.

McKinsey & Company, one of the world’s best known and most respected management consultancies just published a paper on how executives can best manage information overload. Take a look at the article to figure out what you’re doing to help your clients manage their professional information tsunami.

One of the things in the article that I find most interesting is what the authors describe as The Perils of Multitasking.

The perils of multitasking

<snip>  It helps us feel, at least briefly, that we’ve accomplished something—even if only pruning our e-mail in-boxes. Unfortunately, current research indicates the opposite: multitasking unequivocally damages productivity.

It slows us down
The root of the problem is that our brain is best designed to focus on one task at a time. When we switch between tasks, especially complex ones, we become startlingly less efficient: in a recent study, for example, participants who completed tasks in parallel took up to 30 percent longer and made twice as many errors as those who completed the same tasks in sequence.  <snip>

It hampers creativity
One might think that constant exposure to new information at least makes us more creative. Here again, the opposite seems to be true. Teresa Amabile and her colleagues at the Harvard Business School evaluated the daily work patterns of more than 9,000 individuals working on projects that required creativity and innovation. They found that the likelihood of creative thinking is higher when people focus on one activity for a significant part of the day and collaborate with just one other person. Conversely, when people have highly fragmented days—with many activities, meetings, and discussions in groups—their creative thinking decreases significantly. <snip>

<snip> This effect is familiar too: who hasn’t struggled against the urge to check the smart phone when it vibrates, even when we’re in the middle of doing something else?

Take a look at the entire article. Better still: Read it, figure out how you want to put it to work and then give it to your clients—with a summary and your recommendations, of course. You’re welcome.

Link to McKinsey, Recovering From Information Overload

During the past couple of weeks we’ve seen a volume of concentrated active searches that might indicate the worst of our economic mess is behind us — we hope.

Whatever the case, we’re beginning to hear reports from people and organization that there are some particular areas where demand is going up. WebWorkerDaily reported back in October there’s an increasing demand for writing. Of course, our own experience is that there’s a constant high demand for great writing as this is a rare, premium skill. WebWorkerDaily spoke with an online freelance job board and found out that these particular writing skills are in high demand: article writing, copywriting, content writing, ghostwriting, academic writing and technical writing.

But one important trend we’ve noticed is the rise of social networking plus executive visibility. This requires a specific type of writing. Through the careful application of an experienced and talented writer, CEOs can dramatically increase their own brand as well as the brand and search engine optimization of their company.

Providing cogent thought leadership and crafting compelling stories is an ART, and several of our expert consultants provide this expertise for Cisco and NetApp executives right now. These are far more than product collateral writers, web content providers or editors on the hunt for typos. They are true masters of communication who can write for internal and external audiences worldwide with the singular voice of an executive.

If you are an executive with vast responsibilities and little time for writing, you know the value of authentic, informative and easily accessible communication with your constituents. Whether it’s a speech, video script, blog, contributed article or global team email, we can help.

Click here and we can have an exec comm pro ready to write for you within 24 hours. Really.

According to an article in The Wall Street Journal, called “Recruiters Rethink Online Playbook,” recruiters are moving away from online job board postings and actually trying to find candidates who are successful and currently employed, not just those who are unemployed, underemployed or desperate.

Really? They’re just figuring this out now?

For the past 14 years, High Tech Connect has carefully built a network of what we call GEMS, our Go-to Expert Marketing Superheroes. These are the best in our business: seasoned marketing, communications, PR and writing pros who already have successful careers in the technology industry. Some are former trade journalists, industry analysts, C-level executives or agency owners. Many have been former High Tech Connect clients one year, only to be placed by us as a consultant with another client the next, or vice versa.

All our GEMS are already busy with clients or a job, but you never know when the right permanent full-time job comes along—or someone’s personal situation changes and employment provides the benefits and stability they need. These are the professionals High Tech Connect presents as candidates. Some may be in between consulting gigs, and a few may be unemployed, but all of them have successful careers and a stellar reputation.

We may leverage our GEMS to find other gems, but you will never see High Tech Connect post jobs or consulting gigs to an online job board. Quality over quantity. Only the best for our clients.

In our mind, it’s still about Who You Know, not just To Whom it May Concern.

Tell us what you think. Are we crazy?

On one hand, I love hearing the professional prognosticators prattle on about the possibility of an economic recovery. On the other hand, economic measurements don’t mean a thing when it’s you who’s out of of work, when it’s you who’s been looking for work for a year and when it’s you who’s running out of unemployment benefits.

You need a job.

And nothing helps you clinch a good job like the interview. More than just qualifications on a résumé, employers need to gauge your chemistry and communication skills. In our experience sending hundreds of candidates on interviews each year, there are always misconceptions and blunders that are preventable.

Today, I found an excellent article on CNNMoney that does a great job blowing up the 10 biggest myths about job interviews. Here’s a sample:

Myth #2: If the company invites you to an interview, that means the job is still open.

Alas, no. In fact, the job may never have existed in the first place: “Some companies use ‘interviews’ to do market research on the cheap. They ask you about your current or recent duties, your pay scale, and so on, to get information for comparison purposes.” Another possibility, Couper says, is that “they may already have a strong internal candidate in mind for the job but just want to see if they come across someone better.”

If you get an interview through a networking contact, he adds, “an employer may interview you simply as a courtesy to the person who referred you, if that is someone they don’t want to disappoint.” [link to the whole article]

Winning jobs is something I think about all the time and we’ve blogged about it here before. Back in September, I posted this article: 3 Common Interview Questions and How to Answer Them. You can expect us to blog about the topic again because most seasoned pros have forgotten what to do and junior candidates haven’t yet learned it.

What you have to say about interviewing for a job in this market? We’d love to hear your new ideas and reports about what you’re experiencing in this market. So let me know.

At the risk of sounding pedantic and grumpy, I’m constantly amazed how marketing communications professionals can do a such a poor job of marketing themselves. Then, the whole self-marketing communications problem is exacerbated as more and more people work remotely. Distance can breed low awareness or, worse, lack of appreciation.

Gina Trapani has thought long and hard about these issues and her insights have come to the attention of Fast Company who has given her a platform. One of her most pithy, accurate insights appears above:  How Telecommuters Stay Close.

Trapani does an excellent job of running down the different ways to use technology to stay close but doesn’t overlook the human touch such as making sure you visit everyone, and that means everyone, when you do make your way to the client’s office.

What are your tips for staying close from afar? How do you stay top of mind even if you’re in another time zone?

Everybody wants to know what’s going to happen next, including members of the Public Relations Society of America.  For its end of the year look ahead, the organization looked into its crystal ball (actually, the newsletter editor checked with some of its more vocal members) and came up with Eleven Trends for 2011. This is what they discovered:

1.  Reputation Management Meets the “WikiLeaks Age”

2.  A New Data Deluge:  Opportunities Meet Analytical Challenges

3.  Here an App, There an App

4.  We’re Back in Business!

5.  Measurement Comes to the Forefront

6.  Wanted: Engaging Storytellers & Well-Written Content

7. Value of Public Relations Continues to Rise

8.  Transformative Online Practices Mature & Grow In Value

9.  Old Practices Come Back Into Focus

10.  Sharing of Resources In a Tight Economy

11.  Finally … Something That Won’t Change

My favorite prediction is the one that says things will stay the same, prediction #11.

The overuse of e-mail and technology to hide from reality. Leaders will continue to hide behind technology when dealing with tough issues. Our ego and desire to stay away from conflict will mean we continue, at times, to choose a method of communication that feels better, but won’t be as successful, and in the end, will waste valuable time. It might feel good to send off an angry e-mail, but passive-aggressive conflict on e-mail escalates faster and lasts longer.

People, including professional communicators, have come to hide behind veils of email, IMs, Facebook likes and Twitter updates. Text can be shaped into wondrous creations of enduring beauty but are a poor substitute for the sound of an earnest voice, firm handshake and sincere eye contact.

What do you think?