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?

That’s what many of our corporate clients do daily in the high-tech marketing industry. Full-time employment isn’t even close to a 40-hour job any more. Seems they are not alone.

Jason Fried, a CNN reporter and author of a new book called Rework, says, “The modern office has become an interruption factory. You can’t get work done at work anymore.”

I’m thrilled on Fridays when usually only one other team member is there in our small office — because I get SO much done. And when I need to crank out an important article or focus on a strategic project, I’m always more efficient and creative between 10 pm and 2 am. Too many college cram sessions, I guess. On the other end of the spectrum, Michelle Stewart gets up at 5 am to plow through her email and tackle client issues before they even log in for the day.

The point is, not everyone works efficiently in a traditional office and this is why clients have reached out to High Tech Connect for home-based expert help over the past 14 years. We were freaking visionaries, way ahead of our time!

So how about some solutions? Jason says there are a lot of things you can do to discourage interruption at work and give people longer stretches of uninterrupted time to get things done. Here are a few:

1. Instead of casual Fridays, how about no-talk Thursdays? Try it. You won’t believe how effective it is. On Thursdays — and you can just try this once a month if you want — no one in the office can talk to each other. You’ll be blown away by how much work you’ll get done that day. I’m just asking for one day a month to start. Try it, trust me.

2. Use passive instead of active communication tools. When someone calls your name, knocks on your door, or stops you in the hallway, you can’t avoid them. Even if you try, you’re already distracted. So, instead of relying on so much face-to-face communication and collaboration — what I like to call “active” communication — try more passive methods of communication. Use e-mail. Use instant messaging. Use collaboration software. Here’s why: If people don’t want to pay attention, they can turn that tool off. They can hide it. They can put it away. You can’t put away a knock on your door or someone calling your name. But you can quit your e-mail app for a few hours. Then, when you’re ready, you can open it up — on your own schedule — and get back to people.

3. Cancel your next meeting. Or just don’t attend it. I’m not suggesting you boycott all meetings — just the next one. Life will go on. And all that stuff you thought you had to talk about with eight other people around a table will get worked out some other way. You’ll gain an hour of time you can spend on more important things. And so will those eight other people. Work can happen without that next meeting. Once you recognize that meetings aren’t as necessary as you thought, they’ll become a last resort instead of a first resort.

Here’s the entire CNN article and video from Jason.

What do you do to minimize interruptions at your job?

Remember Howard Beale in the movie Network?  The year was 1976 and Faye Dunaway and William Holden were the big, sexy stars of the day. (Just to put this into a chronological perspective, Kate Hudson was minus three-years-old at the time.) Anyway, even though I was in diapers at the time, the movie made a deep impression on me and I recently read something that made me think about the famous “mad as hell” scene.

I was reading Erika Nepolotano’s blog. You might remember Erika if you used to shop at T.J. Maxx in Denver. She was the redhead. Erika made a successful career transition from gadget store clerk and waitress at TGIFriday to a copywriter. Really.

While I don’t always agree with her opinions (and don’t approve of some of her language), Erika has a sense of style and level of energy that’s hard to match. Essentially, Erika can get mad. Really mad. Redheaded mad and she shows no mercy and asks for none in return. Sometimes I wish I could be so ballsy. Recently, Erika attended DEMO in Denver and totally lost her cool about the buzzwords bandied about and here’s a sanitized snippet from her blog. Communicators, take note:

You and your buzzwords. They’re meaningless. They’re the uncooked spaghetti of marketing-speak: you throw them out there and they don’t stick, they just fall to the floor with a pathetic splat. And it’s because they no longer have meaning.

…Here’s an idea: if you’re going to tell me about your product or service, tell me how it solves my problems. I don’t care HOW it does it. I want the hook. The reason I’d push over a pregnant woman standing in line in front of me to be the first one to taste what you’re cooking. I could give three fine frog hairs if it’s an innovative software that integrates my content to provide an overarching, game-changing perspective.

…Why do we even bother with buzzwords? Do they make us feel smart? If anything, they make us look pretty dumb for using the same nonsensical speech as everyone else. To make yourself stand out from the crowd, why not do yourself a solid and actually talk about solving problems instead of playing a zero-sum game of monkey see, monkey do?

…I’m never afraid to be the a@(#**@e. My gig as a writer is words. Which is why when companies and potential clients inevitably ask me what I do, it’s easy.

Here’s a link to her entire post and you’ve been warned about the language, right? And let me know if you think Erika is channeling Howard Beale.

Cheryl Goldberg, one of our expert writing consultants, offers some of the criteria companies use to identify the most strategic case studies. You can read more on Cheryl’s blog here.

Star Power

If the customers you’re going after Fortune 500 companies, you’ll certainly want the legitimacy that having case studies from big name customers will provide. Certainly, I have plenty of clients chasing after these big names.

However, beware that these are the most difficult to line up and can result in wasted resources. Many large companies have policies that prohibit them from endorsing other vendors’ products—thus be prepared to expend much more time and effort finding big companies willing to do a case study. Even if a company says they do case studies, approvals may be withheld at the last minute, often with no explanation. This can result in wasted money for stories that are never approved. You can minimize (but never completely eliminate) this risk by determining in advance the company’s policy on case studies, who’s in charge of the project, and ask their permission before beginning the process.

Target Industries

Often, customers are concerned about whether you understand their specific industry—whether that’s manufacturing, retail, or life sciences. Creating case studies about customers in all of the industries that constitute your target markets will ensure you have the right materials on hand to alleviate those concerns.

Product Line

Clearly, you’ll want case studies for each product in your product line so you can demonstrate your success in delivering promised benefits for each product.

Geographic Area

Some companies target case studies geographically. For example, one client that markets to physicians highlights customers practicing in each region of the country.

ROI

ROI can be extremely difficult to quantify. In many cases, companies that want a lot of case studies will produce some that highlight qualitative benefits. Still, make sure that some of your case studies demonstrate strong quantifiable ROI.

Momentum

In many cases, quality will be more important than quantity. If resources are an issue, you don’t really need dozens of case studies that illustrate the same point. It’s better to make sure you have at least one case study for each key product, target market, or other initiative. At the same time, some companies find it very important to demonstrate momentum and adoption in their marketplace. One way to meet these requirements is to create customer press releases; short and sweet descriptions about your new customers and why they’re choosing your products and release them on an ongoing basis over the wire services.

Miscellaneous

Every once in awhile, I’ll come across a unique reason to create a case study or customer press release. For example, one company produced customer press releases and case studies specifically about customers who had come to them after defecting from their main competitor. This was an interesting exercise because no customer will allow you to directly say that they dumped a previous vendor in your favor. What you can do is produce a standard case study or press release about these customers. And presumably, the sales rep can fill in the missing details in one-on-one conversations.

Another customer had come from a business that had evolved over time from a document printing company to one that automated document processes. A prize case study for them was one that covered the entire automated process, rather than individual automated capabilities.

Companies produce case studies for many reasons. When you’re looking for customers to profile, chose the ones that are most strategic for your business.

How does your organization select customers to profile with case studies?

Wired magazine just published a list of what they call “Seven Essential Skills You Didn’t Learn in College” and I think you ought to take a look at it. Take a look at this excerpt from Wired’s course catalog:

Post-State Diplomacy

Why take this course? As the world becomes evermore atomized, understanding the new leaders and constituencies becomes increasingly important.

What you’ll learn: How to practice statecraft without states.
From tribal insurgents to multinational corporations, private charities to pirate gangs, religious movements to armies for hire, a range of organizations now compete with (and sometimes eclipse) the nation-states in which they reside. Without capitals or traditional constituencies, they can’t be persuaded or deterred by traditional tactics.

But that doesn’t mean diplomacy is dead; quite the opposite. Negotiating with these parties requires the same skills as dealing with belligerent nations—understanding the shareholders and alliances they must answer to, the cultures that inform how they behave, and the religious, economic, and political interests they must address.  [more]

Take a read and let me know what you think.

100 Essential Skills for Geeks

Ah, don’t we all wish problem-solving was this easy?

If you haven’t embraced the Chat instant message function on Facebook, you are missing a huge opportunity to stay in front of clients, colleagues and friends — and even save days of phone tag or email exchange. This Web 2.0 tool has become a “secret weapon” for our team.

For example, when a new project request comes to High Tech Connect, we mine our database and typically find 2-3 dozen candidates to screen. But if we glance at the people currently online on Facebook, we may see a name that jogs our memory about a skill they have or a colleague they know. Then before looking up 36 phone numbers or crafting 36 coherent emails and waiting for replies, we can simply ping someone via Chat: “You still consulting?” “Ever done PR for a wireless startup?” “Written many pharmaceutical white papers?”

And sometimes we need to ask a quick question to a busy client. Catching them on Facebook at 10:20 pm means they’re still awake and can probably handle a one-line query about interview times or purchase order approvals. But we always follow the rules of the instant messaging road: don’t bug people unless you really need to ask a question, if they don’t respond they are away or busy, and always keep it quick and to the point.

Obviously, chat does not replace live phone calls or detailed emails, but in this economy with overworked clients and under-utilized consultants, the shortest distance to connect them can be right there on our Facebook Chat screen. So, if you see us on Facebook, ping us any time. We’d love to Chat. )

What did the attendees think? Here are some of their comments:

“The crash course was singularly one of the most impactful I’ve ever attended in relation to helping me grow business in 2009. Great job all round. Brian was brilliant.”

“My head is still spinning from all I learned!”

“You guys are awesome! You need to do this on the next level, like Lesson 2.”

“You guys cut thru a lot of clutter and techno-babble. For me, the approach was right. This ain’t about technology. It’s about information. Linking people and ideas. Ease. Sign me up for the grad course.”

“The HTC crash course is worth every penny. I suggested a client build their online presence…we’re talking about it…I absolutely could not have made the proposal pre-crash course.”

“In 7 hours I learned what it would have taken me months to figure out on my own. Your presentation was densely packed with answers to questions I didn’t know I had. Thank you for offering this timely class – it has really boosted my value to clients.”

“As a result of attending the seminar, I imported my Outlook calendar into Linkedin and have increased my connections by 30% from just an hour of activity on Lilnkedin.”

“I feel like I finally get it! Now I just need to let go of the fear and jump right in…”

“GREAT seminar. Tons of material covered in a very short time. Again, I just needed more time to absorb, ask questions, and have hands-on experience.”

“The High Tech Connect staff brings expertise and enthusiasm to their workshops. They have real world experience with the subject matter, and check in with each individual attending to ensure they gain what they need from the information presented.”

“The event not only presents a lot of ‘dots’ but more importantly helps ‘connect’ the various dots: Facebook, Twitter, blogging, RSS…”

“This was definitely as advertised! I’m glad I parted with dough to be here.”

“High Tech Connect continues to work with its team to arm them with the latest innovations and techniques. Their Social Media Crash Course is a great example of how they keep their team ahead of the curve.”

“Very good and frank overview of most popular social media tools. Nice to be able to experiment in real time – definitely worth my time!”