I once taught English composition to college freshman. The first essays they turned in were punctuation nightmares. Bloodied commas, bruised quotation marks, and slain apostrophes littered the written page. The carnage was horrifying, yet the students didn’t understand the enormity of their punctuation crimes. When they routinely sent messages that might say, “c u l8r @ crnr str,” it’s easy to see why they forgot that they had access to the beauty and power of words.

What held true for college freshman is equally applicable in the world of marketing. Everyone wants to be understood, whether it is in an e-mail to your boss or in an expensive direct mail piece to your top potential target. A missing comma or quotation mark can deliver a world of difference in your message.

Punctuation is there because it helps you communicate clearly to the reader. That’s it. All those commas, apostrophes, quotation marks, periods, and uppercase rules, blended together, function to let your eyes and brain travel along the page in an understandable manner.

Imagine this: You are driving down a street, but the dividing lane is not marked. There are no stop signs when traffic intersects and no yield signs when cars merge into your space. What would happen? It would be a mess, and confusion would reign. That’s exactly what happens when punctuation is ignored.

Also consider that every time you write something and send it out into to the world – whether it’s a tweet, e-mail, sales letter, brochure, or even a business card – your intelligence is stamped all over it.

For example, there’s a reason why e-mail spam sticks out. It is full of punctuation errors and other indicators that convey to our brain that something isn’t right. We automatically assign a level of intelligence to the person who wrote it. The same thing happens when someone reads something that came from your company. The effect of the right words, used in the right way, can be awesome or awful.

Do yourself a favor today. Pick one mark of punctuation you struggle with and resolve to master it. Grab a grammar guide, listen to a great podcast, and do a couple of exercises. Invest a little in your education. You’ll be glad you did.

On a very wet Thursday morning the world welcomed Jacob Thomas Wilkins, son of Ben Wilkins, Talstone’s Interactive Designer, and his wife, Bre. Weighing 6 lbs., 14 oz and 19” long, Jacob calmly accept the accolades surrounding his arrival, which included much adoration as he was wheeled out of the hospital nursery.

While Ben tried many complicated mathematical equations to discern his son’s arrival, in the end, Jacob set his own agenda and arrived a few days early. We at Talstone couldn’t be happier for Ben and Bre and wish them a hearty congratulations on this new addition to their household.

Additional note: We’re also happy (and relieved) to report that Jacob looks more like Bre than Ben.

Peter Bregman, author of Point B: A Short Guide To Leading A Big Change and CEO of the global management firm Bregman Partners, Inc., recently wrote a great blog post titled How To Escape Perfectionism. Having often felt the pains of being a perfectionist myself, I was immediately intrigued with the antidote Mr. Bregman offered for those of us who suffer from the condition.

One of Mr. Bregman’s more insightful observations is one that I have seen all too often in management – especially marketing management. Mr. Bregman writes, “Perfectionists have a hard time starting things and an even harder time finishing them. At the beginning, it’s they who aren’t ready. At the end, it’s their product that’s not. So either they don’t start the screenplay or it sits in their drawer for ten years because they don’t want to show it to anyone. But the world doesn’t reward perfection. It rewards productivity. And productivity can only be achieved through imperfection. Make a decision. Follow through. Learn from the outcome. Repeat over and over and over again. It’s the scientific method of trial and error. Only by wading through the imperfect can we begin to achieve glimpses of the perfect.” Mr. Bregman goes on to offer three ideas to help you escape the trap of perfectionism. I’d like to paraphrase his ideas as I see them relate to marketing.

1. It’s more important to start your marketing efforts than waiting until everything is just right.

I remember sage advice that was given to me early on in my life. People would tell me if you wait until you have enough money to get married or to have kids you’ll never do either one. The same principle applies to the perfectionist in marketing. Sometimes we agonize over the details, fearful that any unsettling detail will result in the campaign faltering. However, any marketing plan, no matter how well thought out it may be, will have to be flexible enough to account for the imperfections that will show up as the campaign is rolled out. When we accept that our marketing plans aren’t flawless, we’ll begin to develop better plans.

2. You’ve got to learn to trust your own marketing skills as much, if not more, than those you follow in print or online.

One thing I’m happy to say I learned in college was how to learn. I enjoy gleaning insights from “experts” in the areas that I find interesting. With the Internet, there’s certainly no shortage of information to absorb in the quest for perfection. Still, there’s comes a point when the information becomes echoes. The noise starts sounding the same and offers nothing new. It’s during those times when we have to accept that we have enough “education” to proceed with our efforts. We have to learn to accept and be comfortable with the thought that our own minds are equipped with enough knowledge to get the job done. After all, the powers that be won’t be so patient as to allow you to read a library’s worth of marketing books before you execute.

3. You have to learn to listen to the right voices and then be the right voice.

With the coming of age of social networking, there isn’t a shortage of experts, gurus, divas, and super humans when it comes to … well, anything. Everyone knows how to make you the perfect marketer, both on and offline. However, you need to be very careful who you listen to. Feedback from someone trying to get into your pocketbook or someone who doesn’t have your best interest at heart isn’t worth listening to. Likewise, you need to make sure that you are the sort of manager who is worth listening to. You want to become the wind to your team’s back and not a hurdle.

A former manager I worked for told me once that the founder of the company we worked for liked hiring workaholics. The founder felt that workaholics would always get the job done. I’m sure there are other business leaders who enjoy hiring perfectionists. However, I agree with Peter Bregman in thinking that I have to escape perfectionism if I want to really get the job done for my team and for our clients.

Until next time … keep your pulse strong.

There is a strong push to incorporate social media into healthcare. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at some of the healthcare social media tweet chats, like #hcsm or #hcmktg.

So it’s important to understand how exactly Facebook trying to kill Twitter.

The Facebook vs. Twitter Battle

First it tried to buy Twitter for half a billion dollars in October of 2008. To me, that seems like a pretty good deal for Twitter, a company without much of a business model to begin with. But, the Twitter brain trust said no.

So Facebook decided that it could kill Twitter by doing the exact same thing. Yesterday, only about two minutes after I posted on Twitter about this very topic, Facebook announced that it will be adding the ability to tag status updates with an @ symbol, just like Twitter. This, combined with Facebook Lite, may make some Twitter users wonder “Haven’t I seen this before?”

What’s Twitter’s Next Move?

Twitter has to respond. It has to continue to roll out new features or they will appear stagnant. If Twitter remains silent, the impression will be that what they currently offer is the best they can do.

The logical response to me would be to add some sort of organization to the tweets. Right now, tweets are organized by time in descending order. Currently, conversations get interrupted with other tweets and it makes it very difficult to follow thought processes. If Twitter can thread tweets or find another way to organize, it would be a huge step in its development.

Why Facebook’s Efforts Will Fail-Whale

It’s simple, really. The two sites have two completely different purposes. The people I follow on Twitter rarely overlap with my friends on Facebook, and for a good reason. On Facebook, I share more personal information, information that I only want people that I’ve actually met in person to see.

My Twitter followers, however, are people who share similar interests, whether I’ve met them or not. They may be fellow geeks that can provide some programming support, healthcare tycoons that have great insights and ideas, or fellow fanatics of Kentucky Wildcats basketball. I’m not giving out my email address, home address, pictures of my vacation, or other personal information to these people.

At the end of the day, this is a very good move for Facebook, and Facebook users should be very excited about it. This move has potential to be the first steps of change for Facebook. If Facebook makes it easier for non-Facebook members to read updates while still protecting private information, Twitter should worry.

With Facebook’s new platform and API, a few tweaks and external applications could provide healthcare organizations and health systems with social networks that provide Twitter-like public updates while protecting private information. Combining the functionality of the two services could open up several more doors that are currently closed.

Follow Ben Wilkins on Twitter!

I am proud to say that I am an Eagle Scout. On one of the walls in my office I have my Eagle Certificate, complete with the pseudo signature of the great Ronald Reagan, and my Eagle Scout medal pinned on me by my mother when I was just a teenager. Going through the Scouting program taught me many valuable lessons about being a leader and a responsible citizen in both private and public settings. As I thought about what lessons I learned while earning the Eagle Scout award, I realized that many of those lessons could be applied to my role as a marketer. In particular I thought about the Scout Law and how it could translate to any marketing strategy. With all due respect to the Boy Scout community, I offer the marketer’s take on the Scout Law:

A marketer is:

Trustworthy

Generally speaking, people don’t trust the word of a company. However, people do trust the word of other people. As a result, you should make sure that all of your marketing efforts sound human and can deliver on the promises that they make. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Trust men and they will be true to you; treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.”

Loyal

Your marketing efforts should produce loyalty for your brand. If your goal is to just get into the purses of your target, you’ve grossly missed the point of marketing. All of your efforts to market your product or service should create fans. They should be so loyal that they themselves become a non-paid sales force for you.

Helpful

This should be a given. When marketing your product or service, remember the words of the Hippocratic oath taken by healthcare providers that reads, “I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.” Your product or service should be providing the backscratcher that will satisfy your target’s itch.

Friendly

As mentioned earlier, people buy from people. Roman philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero said it best when writing, “The rule of friendship means there should be mutual sympathy between them, each supplying what the other lacks and trying to benefit the other, always using friendly and sincere words.” Your target can sense when you are more friends with their money than you are with their wellbeing.

Courteous

When marketing to your target avoid being insulting. Many misguided marketing attempts have had the best of intentions but resulted in a segment of business being insulted. Do a quick Google search for “offensive ads” and you will have more than enough creative marketing attempts that prove being disrespectful doesn’t equate to profitable ROI.

Kind

Consider what your marketing says about your organization. Does it promote the values or quality that you want your company known for in a positive way? Does it consider the good of the audience that it is trying to reach? Does your organization capitalize on any opportunities to establish good will with the target? If not, you’re missing valuable touch points with your target. These touch points will enable you to build solid trust in a group that is likely to be skeptical from the start.

Obedient

One of the critical mistakes made in marketing (especially when done in-house) is the failure to listen to their target. Research is key to any successful campaign. Oh, you might be able to make educated guesses based on past experience, but you will find that the more you can get your target to talk to you about how they want to be sold to, the more effective your ROI will be. Listen to your target and then do what they tell you.

Cheerful

If you don’t like marketing, then you need to get out of the business. Let someone else who enjoys it do the work you don’t like. If you continue developing marketing collateral or events when you dislike the work, you will surely waste your money and your efforts. Marketing isn’t a wham-o sort of process. It’s something you need to throw a considerable amount of mental and physical strength into. If you’re unhappy doing the work, then plan on being even more unhappy when the results come in on what you’ve done.

Thrifty

Let’s be honest, marketing can get expensive. In difficult economic times there is more and more pressure to stretch marketing dollars. More is demanded of each new marketing campaign executed. It is more critical that you develop strategies that are effective, efficient, and can provide results. Bear in mind that thrifty in this sense doesn’t mean cheap. It means being strategically wise with your marketing dollars.

Brave

One of the hardest things to see in your marketing is uniqueness. Often times you can find yourself saying the same things to your target that your competitors are saying. If you want to effectively market your business you’re going to have to step out of your comfort zone. Try something new. Be bold in your statement, keeping in mind that your efforts should follow the other points of this marketing code of law. Stepping out might be a bit unnerving, but remember you have go out on a limb – that’s where the fruit is.

Clean

There is a great video presented on YouTube that demonstrates what would happen if a marketing firm were allowed to design a stop sign. When marketing you need to make sure that you keep the main thing the main thing. Don’t junk up your marketing speak with unnecessary words or obscure images that your intended target won’t get. Just because it makes sense to you doesn’t mean it will make sense to anyone else.

Reverent

In marketing you should always have one clearly defined objective for what you’re doing. Everything you do in your strategy should always point back to this objective. If you veer from the objective you risk your message or offer getting disconnected from the target’s need for the product, idea, or service. Even if there is a need for sub-objectives, always remain true to the main goal you’re trying to achieve.

As you think about your next marketing campaign or event, stop to consider the marketing law. You’ll find your efforts more effective and you’ll enjoy your work more. Until next time, keep your pulse strong.