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.

In 1779, the great Benjamin Franklin wrote a letter to Madame Brillon. In this letter, Mr. Franklin recounts a mistake he made as a child. It seems that when Ben was seven years old he had his heart set on a whistle in a local toyshop. His friends had filled his pockets with “coppers” and he went right away to the shop and laid down all his money for the whistle. He took his whistle home and delighted himself with it while causing quite a frustration for the rest of his family. His siblings and cousins learned of the bargain that he had made for the whistle and proceeded to educate the young Ben of the reality that he had actually paid four times for the whistle was worth. Ben was the laughingstock of the house, so much so, that Ben was driven to tears. He never forgot the grief that pricey whistle cost him. As he grew older, however, Ben saw adults who were often paying too much for their whistle.

In marketing, I have the opportunity to see a lot of organizations paying too much for their whistle. Sadly, they work so hard, pushing sales goals, raising unprecedented bars on their marketing efforts, and cracking the whip of overtime on their staff in pursuit of the next big thing. They don’t realize the real cost of their whistle.

I’ve seen sales staff of organizations getting caught up in the glitz and glamour of schmoozing a client for their business. They treat their account with such high attention that they fail to take into account their own personal affairs. They sometimes do rather unscrupulous things to win accounts. To that end I think they’re paying too much for their whistle.

I’ve seen firms overwork good people without a single thought of offering even a small bit of gratitude. They view those who serve them as disposable commodities; nothing more than brute oxen hired to carry the weight of the firm’s world on their shoulders. Yet these employers ponder why the revolving door to their offices is constantly spinning with talent coming and going. They don’t see that they are paying too much for the whistle.

I’ve experienced organizations that have hired our marketing expertise only to question our wisdom in the suggestions we make to achieve their goals. They change course several times, unable to zero in on a clearly defined objective for a campaign. Aimlessly they walk like an unaided blind man in a china shop unable to see the strategy for the planning committee. They find themselves handcuffed to their own perceptions, interpretations, and assumptions that have no real basis or research behind them. They truly are paying too much for their whistle.

Near the close of his letter, Benjamin Franklin wrote, “In short, I conceive that a great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by the false estimates they have made of the value of things, and by their giving too much for their whistles.” Ben learned a valuable lesson that many intellectually superior adults to this day haven’t learned. So, will you learn the lesson or will you continue to pay too much for your whistle?

Until next time, keep your pulse strong…

While reading the August issue of HealthLeaders magazine, I ran across an article in the Leadership section titled “Focus May Be the Future.” Its premise is that most hospitals can’t continue to be all things to all people in both the current economic environment and as healthcare reform evolves to incentivize providers based on demonstrated quality measures. Dr. Stephen Newman, the chief operating officer of Tenet Healthcare, states, “In only the rarest incident does a general hospital have the financial wherewithal to be all things to all people.”

We often get asked at Talstone why we specialized in healthcare. Like Dr. Newman’s statement, we realized almost from the beginning of our firm that trying to be all things to all people in the marketing world was a big task. Maintaining an understanding of the specialty nuances of multiple industries such as hospitality, healthcare, golf, or the many aspects of consumer goods was both time consuming and at times hard to do at the level we prided ourselves in.

Having personally spent almost 20 years in the corporate healthcare arena, our firm’s growth and focus had naturally evolved and gravitated to that industry.

So in April 2008, after an extensive evaluation of our strengths, experiences, passions, and successes, we decided to turn our firm’s focus completely to healthcare.

Much like Tenet’s experiences, specialization allows us to do more with less. It allows us to be more knowledgeable about the challenges our clients and their target audiences face. Specialization allows us to quickly assess the landscape of each one of our clients so that we can develop strategies to meet their objectives in a timely manner. On more than one occasion clients have told us how nice it is they don’t have to “spoon feed” us like firms they have used in the past.

Dr. Newman goes on to say in the article, “You can’t be an A player in all the services.” That’s certainly true, and we see the benefits of that every day in our firm. It’s a lesson that resonates throughout our industry.

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” That’s certainly a warning that everyone using Twitter would do well to heed. Research conducted by Pear Analytics bears evidence of that fact when they found that 40% of what gets posted to Twitter is ‘pointless babble.’

But what does this mean to you as an upstanding citizen of the Twittersphere? It means you need to consider what you’re posting to Twitter if you’re trying to increase your influence on your given target. There’s probably no better categorization of your tweets than those created for the Pear Analytic report. So, think about your latest tweets. Which category do they fall into?

News

Do you find yourself becoming one of the many Twitter news anchors ready with the latest and greatest news story? Are you quick to give traffic updates to weary travelers in your area? If so, your tweets will likely fall into the news category. Out of the number studied by Pear Analytics, 3.60% of all tweets fall into this category.

Self-Promotion

Are your tweets plugging your latest service, book, or philosophy? Do your tweets read like a weekly grocery store flyer complete with coupons for Twitter followers only? If so, you fall into the self-promo category. This category accounted for 5.85% of the tweets studied.

Conversational

Some Tweeters use their tweets as a near-instant messaging service. Their tweets come across more like, well, a conversation between two or more individuals. If your tweets fall into this category then you account for 37.55% of all tweets conducted in the study.

Pass Along Value

If your tweets start with “RT” then you’re likely a candidate for the Pass Along Value category. These viral tweets spread interesting links, ideas, quotes, and general knowledge to other followers. This category accounted for some 8.70% of those tweets studied.

Spam

If you actively engage in showing people how they can “learn to get 400,000 followers in an hour” with some revolutionary concept then you’re likely in this dreadful category which accounts for 3.75%.

Pointless Babble

The Pointless Babble tweets are those where you are tweeting just to be tweeting. They include comments such as “I just sharpened my pencil” or “I just drank my second cup of coffee.” While these tweets have no value they account for a whopping 40.55% of the tweets Pear Analytics studied.

Pear Analytics admitted that they felt if the study were conducted over a longer period of time the Pointless Babble and Conversational categories would trade places or at least even out. Regardless, you have to be aware of what sort of communication you are doling out through Twitter. If you don’t understand that the tweets you post do a great deal to build or tear down your reputation as a trusted resource then you are tweeting ‘pointless babble.’ Winston Churchill said it best when he said, “When the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber.” You need to take inventory of your tweets and see if you’re demonstrating the excellence of an eagle or simply tweeting like a parrot with its foot hung.

Until next time… keep your pulse strong.

I’m not a huge baseball fan. Sure, I played Little League growing up but really only because I lived in a very small town where there wasn’t much else to do in the summer months. When I played, my preferred position was second base. Outside of the occasional line drive, most of the balls that came my way were grounders that if I kept my head down and eye on the ball I usually could snatch up and easily get it to the first baseman in time to get the batter out. Pitching – that was a job I left to others. It was definitely not one of my talents.

Its funny how life works. I haven’t picked up a baseball or softball in a few years; however, one of my favorite activities as I grow older is pitching. The type of pitching I love is sitting down in front of a prospect and delivering a message on how and why my firm fits into their needs.

A couple of weeks ago, I had an opportunity to “pitch” Talstone to a rather large prospective client that was putting its marketing work out to bid. Sure, I get to routinely pitch our services to prospects; however, this one was a little more formal and to a larger group of executives than normal.

So what made this so special that I took time to write my very first post on The Pulse? The process we went through to prepare is one that every organization should do to make sure they always put their best foot forward in their sales efforts.

The Warm Up
As every pitcher does in pre-game preparations, before our big pitch we took time to research the other firms that were going after the client. We evaluated everything from how big they were to what type of capabilities they touted. We then looked at our prospective client and determined how our capabilities met their needs as they looked to position themselves in a unique specialty marketplace.

The Right Pitches
Fastballs? Breaking balls? Change ups? Once the research was completed, our team strategized on what we needed to say to build on our strengths and differentiate us from our competitors. Was it size? Specialization? Experience? Knowing who we are and conveying that clearly is key in a sales setting.

The Motions
Overhand? Sidearm? As we developed our key messages, we realized very quickly that our method of presenting had to be different than the expected. We ditched the traditional PowerPoint and created an innovative way to display our capabilities in a manner that addressed some of the needs of this prospect. As well, we looked at our printed materials/leave behinds and made sure they reinforced our brand and what our prospect needed to know about us to make a good decision.

The Delivery
While anticipating every dynamic of a pitch is impossible, we walked through the presentation and prepared back up plans for the audiovisual needs as well as thought through potential questions that could be asked about our firm. Fortunately, no technical problems occurred and the questions asked were ones we had prepared to address.

Every healthcare organization has opportunities to “pitch” their services every day. It’s important to step back routinely and take time to work through a simple process to make sure you are putting forth your best foot when you step up to the mound to deliver the messages necessary to put your team in a position to win the game.

Off to the next pitch … Play Ball!!!

During a recent writer’s conference, the instructor gave us a good tip for getting into a character’s head. The problem that arose was how to find a character’s “voice” if you’ve set a story in the third-person point of view. When you write from a third-person point of view, as in “John felt scared,” you’ve got a bit of a distance between you and your character.

But when you switch it to the first-person point of view, “I shook; I was so scared,” you get right into the character’s head and see the world through his eyes. Sometimes writing from that perspective for practice, even if you don’t use it, can help fine tune a character.

That’s when it really hit me that in marketing we ignore this point of view often.

Yes, we constantly try to craft messages and themes and solutions that meet a targeted audiences’ needs and perform research to figure out what compels them to act in a certain way, make a particular decision, and move them closer to choosing your solution.

But too often that research is outwardly focused on a potential audience. We court them and search for them and believe our one-on-one conversations are yielding a rich mine of information.

But we quite often neglect one of the best resources we have at our disposal – our own clients. Whether it is something as formal as conducting primary, qualitative research with a telephone interview, or more simplistic with an e-mail survey asking for their feedback, we need to constantly be aware of the reasons why someone chose us, why they continue to stick with us, and especially why someone would decide to leave us.

That last point is important. Regularly taking your client’s pulse – checking out things from that first-person point of view – can prevent departures that come as a shock to the company later on. Don’t just ask your client if they are satisfied and would they refer you; try to dig deeper than that.

If you are in an ongoing relationship with them, ask them why. Would they do it all over again if they could? Regardless of how you got them on board to begin with, ask them what spaces they are occupying now – what media they read, what has changed in their habits, what magazine or Web site do they no longer find value in? What new challenges are they facing? Could you help them with those?

It gives you a chance to walk around inside their head and view your service or solution through the eyes of the people who use it every day. And in checking out that first-person point of view, it helps you develop the right “voice” your marketing messages need.