Living in Cleveland, as I do, I have frequent conversations with executives who run prototypical rust-belt businesses. Heavy manufacturing, industrial distribution and professional services that support these core businesses that are decidedly unsexy and unremarkable.

What’s surprising about these discussions is how many of these executives view their own companies as unexceptional and nondescript. Which begs the question: If you don’t think your company is remarkable and unique, why would anyone else?

As the former owner of a manufacturing company that produced labeling machines (it doesn’t get less sexy than labeling) I can attest to the dysfunctional industrial mindset that dominates entire industry sectors. Manufacturers are obsessed with their physical equipment, not what it is capable of providing. Distributors are the sum of their products, not the value they add in knowledge, responsiveness and expertise. And service companies have absolutely no idea how to separate themselves from nearly identical competitors.

When I hear these executives describe their own company in these terms, I see boundless opportunity. In most cases, their competitors behave in exactly the same way, enabling a savvy, thoughtful  and creative marketer to create a distinctive and memorable presence in their industry sector. And with the proliferation of penetrating social media tools, the ability to create an impression and reach your targets with precision and frequency has never been greater.

So if I can see the opportunity, why can’t they? I hear the same excuses over and over, including:

1. My customers aren’t on the internet. I was wondering who it was that wasn’t on the internet at all. Turns out it’s always the clients and prospects of every industrial executive I speak with. Theirs are the ones who don’t use e-mail, never watch anything on YouTube, get their news exclusively from newspapers, still use film cameras, listen only to CD’s and still deliver presentations from a stack of transparencies. I don’t believe it. What’s more believable is that these companies have never provided any reason for any of their clients to use the internet to gather information, gain knowledge or, heaven forbid, entertain.
2. My customers buy on price, so what’s the point? The point is that you’ve never given your clients any reason to base their buying decision on anything other than price. That’s the fundamental problem. You need to become more valuable, and a thoughtful social media program can communicate your distinctive abilities, and reinforce the true value you deliver.
3. What would I say? At first, it’s not about what you say, but how you contribute. How can you help? What do you know that you can share? It’s about them, not about you. Link to articles that you think they would find helpful and interesting. Link to videos that are instructive and entertaining. Link to research that will help their strategic business decisions. And write about the successes that you’ve contributed to and the problems that you’ve helped overcome. Nobody’s expecting brilliance. Insight will do.
4. I don’t have the time. What priorities do you have that are greater than developing your business? Building close relationships with your prospects and clients is not something you can outsource to a marketing firm. Your web developer cannot substitute Flash for real conversations. Want to demonstrate your commitment? Spend some time each day participating. If you don’t commit and engage, neither will your staff.
5. I would lose control. For many old school executives, the concept of social media participation is downright scary. What do you mean people can leave comments? What if they say bad things about us? How can I control what my employees say online? For the command and control executive, the openness of the social media channels strikes fear in their heart. For these executives, I can only commiserate and offer the limited consolation that the new world of social media marketing won’t be that bad if you’re authentic, open, truthful and helpful. Now is that too hard?

I had a meeting this morning with Michael DeAloia, Cleveland’s former TechCzar, who has spent virtually his entire career involved in assorted aspects of business development. As the founder of several technology start-ups, an advisor to emerging technology companies, former director of technology development for the city of Cleveland, former company owner, CFO and director of business development for several Cleveland area technology firms, the TechCzar is intimately familiar with the essential financial elements that enable business growth and success.

He’s also a social media maven, with two blogs of his own, a daily fixture on assorted social media platforms and the founder of two social media startups. Basically, he’s got the credentials, the experience and the detailed understanding of the potential of social media to advance specific business objectives. So, when he talks about executing social media strategies, a lot of savvy people in town listen.

That’s why I wanted to hear his perspective on social media ROI – a topic that’s inflamed the Twittersphere since Olivier Blanchard published his series of blog posts that excoriated the pretentious social media gurus who promote unreliable and flawed ROI models.

So, does ROI it exist? Should it be tracked? And, if so, how should it be measured?

As Michael makes clear, an essential element of any social media strategy is how that strategy contributes to business development. And business development is clearly defined as activity that generates revenue. It really is that simple.

Salesforce.com recently introduced tools that integrate the online CRM system with Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, thereby enabling their users to track contact and activity originating in the social media sphere. Salesforce’s integration an acknowledgement that companies need to track all of their business development activities, not just those emanating from the historic direct marketing channels. As marketing investment shifts to the new social media platforms, executives will need firm data to determine the efficacy and effectiveness of their assorted social media channels.

Sorry if this sounds so Web 1.o, but this is the real world, where investment decisions are based on hard data, not on warm feelings. Bottom line, if your social media efforts do not translate into an increased number of transactions, larger transactions, increased margins or reduced costs, then your insistence on the value of your conversations, retweets and Fan Page subscriptions is a pure and limpid farce.

As Michael concludes: “Dollars in the bank, baby.” Truth.

The blogosphere and Twittersphere have been buzzing this past week over a series of blog posts by Oliver Blanchard on his blog, The BrandBuilder, discussing how to communicate social media ROI to skeptical executives.

The posts sparked dozens of comments and hundreds of Tweets from social media aficionados that split between those who castigated Olivier for daring to introduce crass mercantile interests into the pristine world of social media and those who recognize the business realities involved with securing investment and executive support and need practical guidance to pitch their social media plans.

Olivier was precisely correct when he wrote that executives need to hear how any social media plan will generate a tangible and measurable return on their investment. These executives are responsible for dispensing a finite amount of corporate resources among departments. It is practical, desirable and reasonable that they dispense investment dollars to those projects that will advance the company’s financial position the farthest. That’s reality. Now how do you deal with it?

Once you understand their agenda – maximizing the return on their finite investment dollars – you can frame your social media plans effectively, in language that is compelling and convincing.

Rule #1: do not talk about Twitter followers, the number of retweets last month or the number of times a Fan Page was shared on Facebook. They don’t understand and they don’t care. Zip it until next month’s local SMC meeting.

Rule #2: Speak in language that they understand: Process, Plan, Cost and Return. CEO’s will want to understand the SM process and know that you have a precise plan to execute. By the way, it must be written, or it’s not really a plan.

Rule #3: Do not tell the CEO that the cost of your social media plan is zero or you’ll lose all credibility. Although Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and WordPress do not charge their users, their cost is not zero. Their actual cost must include the human costs of participation, engagement, content development and management. How many employees will be involved? At what level? How many hours per day? Per week? Although the company doesn’t write a separate check for social media costs, they are paying for participation, and the total cost may be significant.

Rule #4: Focus on Quantitative, not Qualitative returns. Qualitative returns include the impact of your participation on your company’s reputation and the value of extended online conversations in relationship building. The CEO doesn’t care. I know you do, and I know your CEO should, but that’s not how he measures success. He wants Quantitative metrics. How many new customers did your efforts generate? How many new sales? How much did the average sale increase? What impact did your efforts have on gross margin?

Rule #5: Understand how the F.R.Y. metrics explain and support your social media goals. As Olivier described in his blog post, a compelling social media strategy should improve:

Frequency Increasing sales revenue by shortening the interval between transactions.

Reach (breadth) Increasing sales revenue by increasing net new customer count.

Reach (Depth) Increasing sales revenue by helping customers buy deeper into the product line.

Yield Increasing sales revenue by driving customers to want to increase their average per transaction spending.

Rule #6: Be prepared to detail how you intend to track sales that emerge from the social media channels. You must be able to track results to prove that your SM participation justified the company’s investment.

There. That wasn’t so hard. Now head up to the CEO’s office and tell him how you’re going to improve the company’s bottom line. And you can blog about it later.

The publishing industry has been devastated by the Internet model that demands free content immediately delivered in a variety of user-chosen formats.

Newspapers are floundering, trying desperately to remain relevant when the news they deliver to your doorstep has already been read and digested for up to 24 hours.

And the news magazines are facing an even more perilous future, since the news they have historically reported is now delivered over a week after its occurrence. When Twitter can provide reports on, and photos of, an airplane landing in the Hudson as it happens, the prospect of a news magazine reporting the same event seven days later doesn’t seem particularly compelling.

Facing this historic business crisis, Newsweek decided to do something about it. They aren’t going to be just a weekly news magazine (despite their extraordinarily precise brand name), instead they are going to be….. a thought leader. And, to cement their long-term viability, they’re increasing the price of the now non-news week magazine so that their subscriber base can be simultaneously confused and impoverished.

Imagine if ESPN tomorrow were to declare that because of declining sports viewership, they were switching formats and would now broadcast nothing but classic comedies. And, oh by the way, they were raising their price for all of their previous sports viewers to continue watching. How long would you predict they would last on your cable system?

Apparently the arrogance of publishing executives cannot be tempered by anything as prosaic as business realities. These haughty decision makers have determined that the perception of the publishing brand that they’ve created, developed and reinforced for decades can be summarily dismissed and instantly rebranded with an entirely different focus and objective simply because they declare their intent.

I won’t delve into the recent reporting biases of Newsweek, which suggest that they’ve abandoned all pretense of being an objective news source, and focus on the seemingly genetic arrogance of the executives who intend to pursue a new purpose and create a new publication without any apparent need or clamor from their readers. Markets are supposed to react to demand. Has there been any demand from their readers insisting on lengthy essays on a variety of topics? Have any readers begged for some leadership so they could frame their thoughts correctly? Or is this reformation simply an extension of the publisher’s and editor’s desire to retain some semblance of relevance?

The new model appears to have avoided any attempt at serious design thinking – trying to create a new model to replace the failing model that they’ve always adhered to. Where is the surprise? Where is the integration of web-based elements with the new magazine? How are they remaining relevant to the millions of mobile users? How will they generate sustained revenue outside of their historic advertising model? Where are the innovative social media elements? Where, in fact, is anything distinctive or memorable? Why would I read this?

Cue the dirges, because this experiment is destined to fail. Quickly. Inevitably. And certainly. They are breaking their brand promise, they are trying to force a model on their subscribers without preceding demand and they are vainly clinging to a publishing model that has been demonstrated to fail. Without even a nod to the transformative nature of the web, Newsweek has simply changed itself from a Triceratops to a Stegosaurus. But ensconced in their insular, self-affirming and self-congratulatory echo chambers, they fail to acknowledge that both ultimately became extinct.

Some of the worst advertising in the world is printed in industry trade journals. Those glossy magazines devoted to mobile home production or coal mining that are paid for with industry specific advertising from the titans of their industry sector.

Reading the ads in these magazines illustrates everything that’s wrong with most marketing efforts. They try to incorporate too many messages, they make outrageous claims of industry leadership or market domination, they are insufferably self-aggrandizing and they focus almost exclusively on the product, not the buyer.

As a followup to yesterday’s post detailing the 5 Essential Rules of Business Design, I now offer these 5 Essential Rules of Message Design:

1. Your message should consist of one thing. That’s it. One. Ideally, it should be one thing that appeals to your customers. The ad that you ran that declared your engineering prowess, commitment to service, ease of use, instant availability and unparalleled quality was so crowded and disjointed that it actually conveyed none of these messages. If you don’t know what sets your company apart, how will your prospects or customers know? Distill your capabilities down to the one essential thing your customers can’t live without. Then stick with it.
2. Your product/machine/service is not your message. Industrial companies are frequently run by the person who originally founded the company – who is often the person who designed and engineered their original products. You can tell from their advertising that they love their machines. Their full page ads are dominated by a picture of their latest beauty, which is nearly indistinguishable from their earlier machines, or from any of their competitor’s machines. But the difference, you see, is that the new Model 3550DX can run at 1700″/minute, not 1600″/minute. Get it? Actually, I understand if you don’t. What these company owners fail to grasp is that the buyer isn’t buying the machine, they’re buying the functionality of the machine. They actually don’t care a whit about the machine. Only you do. If you want to create an indelible message, focus on the benefits you deliver: ease of use, reliability, uptime, throughput – and leave the machine out of it.
3. Tell the truth. Your customers know who you really are. Your prospects who convert to customers soon will. If you fabricate an identity that has no connection to reality, you’ll alienate your customers, lose their trust and may never regain it. I worked with an industrial company that was # 7 in their industry sector, with annual sales of about $25 million. They competed with companies with sales exceeding $2 billion, yet made the claim that they led the industry in R&D, service and quality. It was an unbelievable boast. In reality, their strength was regional distribution, but they didn’t think that regional distribution was significant enough, so they puffed themselves up to appear larger and more important than they are. Their sales are down over 25%. Good luck regaining that trust, guys.
4. Commercial buyers are no different than any other consumer. Industrial producers frequently claim that their buyers are different from other buyers. And they’re wrong. The emotional appeals to industrial buyers are virtually identical to every other buyer. Compare the buying process of  a consumer preparing to buy a new car and an industrial buyer preparing to buy a new labeling machine. Both will investigate several buying options. When evaluating these options, both will likely consider the manufacturer’s reputation, reliability, ease of use, total cost of ownership, service requirements, warranties and performance characteristics. Although the total purchase amount may be many factors higher, the buying process isn’t far removed from any standard consumer purchase. This makes the design of your marketing message that much more critical.
5. Repetition works. Just because you tire of your message doesn’t mean that your buyer is tired of it. You see your message every day, in every e-mail that you send and in every view of your company’s web page. But your customers don’t see your message nearly as often. You may send them e-mails every week, but it’s likely that they delete over 70% of your messages before they’re even read. Stay on message. Over and over and over. Across all media, including social media. If your message is important, it’s worth repeating.

The Masters golf tournament is unique in many ways – one of them being their restriction on advertising during their televised event. While most golf tournaments show 16 minutes of commercials per hour, The Masters limits the amount of commercials to four minutes per hour.

This imposed limitation makes each minute of available commercial time more valuable, and actually makes the viewer notice the commercials more because of their rarity.

As a Masters junkie, I kept the tournament on my tv during the entire event, even while working. I just muted the sound so each cheer wasn’t a distraction, and glanced at the screen intermittently to monitor the leaderboard.

Because I watched much of the tournament with the sound off, I was struck by the effectiveness of IBM’s visual design cues that they integrate into every one of their commercials. Even with the sound off, I knew instantly when an IBM commercial was on simply by the consistency of their design cues.

A visit to Youtube confirms that every IBM commercial is bounded by an IBM blue letterbox border above and below the displayed video. This simple visual cue immediately conveys to the viewer that the commercial was created by IBM.

Even if the viewer is not actively paying attention to the commercial, IBM gains another imprint, another touchpoint, that reinforces their presence, increases awareness and strengthens their brand.

This video repetition is a simple design device that should be emulated by small business and by individuals trying to strengthen their own personal brand. What visual cues can you employ that differentiate your message and reinforce your brand image? It can be color, logo, wardrobe choice, tagline, message – as long as it’s authentic, it’s memorable, and it’s all yours.

Then start integrating those visual cues in everything you do online: email signatures, Twitter avatar, blog and website design, personal and corporate letterhead, business cards, social media profile pages – every visual touchpoint that allow you to make and reinforce your brand image.

Golfers recognize the true start of the golf season begins with April’s Masters tournament in Augusta, Georgia. Played on a course designed by golf legend Bobby Jones, and reverentially referred to as a golfing cathedral, the Masters is the only major golf tournament that never changes venue, and is recognized as the preeminent tournament in the sport.

In recent years, the tournament has attracted media scrutiny for its refusal to accept female members, and the club is perceived by many to be a southern-fried, racist and misogynistic old boys club.

However, contrary to the preconceived notion of many that the tournament is too backwards and buttoned-down, The Masters has executed a thorough and brilliant online marketing strategy that reinforces their position as the most highly regarded event in golf.

Identity
Their branding effort begins with the single most recognizable logo in golf.  The brilliant yellow map of the USA with a single red flag waving from a stick, sitting atop a deep green background is immediately recognizable, and the tournament owns those colors and that distinctive design. Quick… try to think of another golf tournament’s logo. Other than the image of the British Open’s claret jug, few have any significant recognition factor, and none approach the instant identification of The Masters’.

The Masters brands everything they do with their distinctive logo. Their website resonates with deep green and yellow and their logo is incorporated throughout the site. Land on any page, and there’s no question that you’re visting The Masters.

Maintain Exclusivity
It’s estimated that The Masters sells more golf paraphernalia during their tournament than any other pro event. Hats, shirts, jackets, umbrellas and golf balls, all emblazoned with The Masters’ logo are grabbed up by eager fans who know that the on-course shop is the only place these items are sold. Ever. There is no online shop. There is no Masters outlet store. You want a Masters baseball cap? Get a ticket and get in line.

Their exclusivity is enhanced also by their refusal to allow more than four minutes of advertising during each hour of their telecasts. Most tournaments allow 16 minutes of commercials. This restriction makes each minute of advertising even more valuable and precious for the advertiser that wants to reach this exclusive audience.

Leverage Technology
Few people would believe that The Masters is the most technologically advanced golf tournament in the world. They have provided live webcasts for years. They have a Live Scoreboard to keep on your desktop for instant scoring updates. This year they released an iPhone app to provide live scoring and live video of select holes, including the famous Amen Corner. Don’t have an iPhone? They designed a mobile device enabled site just for you.

On Twitter? Follow @The_Masters for tournament and scoring updates. Not Twitterfied yet? The Masters will send text messages to your phone with scoring and player updates that you select.

Want to chat with other rabid fans? Join the online Masters Community.

Sitting at your desk in front of your PC? Fire up the Live video feeds of Amen Corner and Holes 15 and 16. Follow the action with high definition full screen video.

Surprise and Delight
The Masters displays a phenomenal aptitude for anticipating the desires of their rabid fans for tournament updates, information and involvement. Few would expect this southern golf institution to be technologically proficient, so when they deliver half a dozen ways to leverage technology to deliver tournament news to fans, they cement their status as the leading golf tournament in the world.

And they’ve raised the bar for golf’s other majors to deliver similar levels of fan satisfaction.

I carry a newspaper in my pocket at virtually all times. Actually I carry hundreds of them. All resident as flowing electrons on the screen of my iPhone. This scares the hell out of the major newspaper companies. And it should.

News stories abound detailing the assorted turmoils afflicting the newspaper industry. Major city papers have already ceased operations, and even the most revered journalistic icons, the New York Times and the Boston Globe, are hemorrhaging cash and are trying desperately to execute a corporate strategy that reverses their current death spiral.

Redefining The News
The major newspapers are in serious trouble because they are not really in the news business, they are in the printed news delivery business. Everything they do, every corporate strategy they envision, revolves around newsprint and its physical distribution.

They have hundreds of millions of dollars invested in huge physical plants, enormous high-speed printing presses, fleets of delivery trucks and an enormous, largely unionized, labor force all devoted to delivering a mass of newsprint to an audience whose demand for printed news has declined precipitously.

News As Advertising Vehicle
It’s not just the demand for printed news that has diminished. It’s the demand for printed advertising, the source of all the newspaper’s revenue.

Craigslist, the free online ad service, single handedly destroyed the newspaper’s classified advertising, which provided about 40% of their total revenue. In the Bay Area alone, area newspapers lost more than $50-65 million a year in help wanted advertising and untold millions more in merchandise and real estate advertising.

Local businesses have discovered that most consumers now rely primarily on the web when searching for a new product or service. These businesses are shifting their marketing expenditures to search engine optimization, pay per click advertising and website development and away from traditional newspaper advertising. And these dollars will never return.

Lack of Design Thinking
The newspaper’s response to this critical strategic shift in demand for their product reflects an absence of design thinking. The typical management response has been to reduce staff, demand concessions from their remaining employees, reduce the size of their paper and threaten online bloggers and news aggregators who dare link to the newspaper’s articles.

Design thinking is about creating a better, different alternative to newsprint for news (and advertising) delivery. The current news executives are focused on analytic choices between producing newsprint for a large audience or a smaller audience, not on envisioning a different news delivery vehicle altogether.

These executives appear to lack the essential components for creative design thinking. Rather than empathize with our desire to receive the news on our terms and on our schedule, they continue to focus on printing and delivering the news on their terms. They need to take a “people first” approach and design a solution that revolves around our desires, not theirs. And I have no desire for a stack of newsprint in my driveway each morning.

They should also read Roger Martin’s brilliant book, The Opposable Mind: How Successful leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking. Martin, the dean of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, details through case studies how managers can synthesize opposing ideas and create bold and dynamic solutions to seemingly insoluble problems.

Experiment and Collaborate
One thing is clear: the newspaper industry won’t solve its problems by doing more of the same, but at a smaller scale. They need to accept that their industry has changed and will never revert to their former glory days. They will need to experiment with new solutions and collaborate with creative geniuses in online disciplines to create a news experience that people will clamor for.

Collaborate with Google, Twitter, Facebook and other social media leaders. Partner with Amazon to deliver your news to reader’s Kindles. Provide subsidized netbooks that receive your news and advertising feeds directly.

I’m not sure what strategy will work or what the future of news delivery will look like precisely. Only one thing is certain: it won’t look like their current model. And they need to start now.

Recall the best customer service episodes of your life. The bending over backward, amazing and memorable service that still stands out in your mind because of its novelty and surprise.

Now think about the worst service you’ve received. The utility company that puts you on hold for 40 minutes. The cellular provider whose billing errors are repeated month after month. The cable company whose installers can’t show up within a 4 hour window.

What’s the difference in perception between the two? Excellent service is typically characterized by intimate personal care and attention while infuriating corporate service is defined by its impersonal, detached and indifferent nature.

One is delivered by a caring person, the other by a faceless, nameless corporate drone.

Which one do you want to do business with?

Now, which do you provide your clients? What’s the face that you put on your social media interactions with your clients?

Many small businesses aspire to be larger and more impressive than they actually are. In their misguided efforts to appear more “corporate,” they depersonalize their client interactions. Calls are forwarded to “Accounts Receivable” instead of “Beverly.” E-mails come from “ABC Inc.” instead of “Mike Bender.” And clients are asked to follow a corporate Twitter account instead of “Betty_at_ABC“.

The explosion of social media platforms and their rapid adoption by business has magnified the disconnect between the “social” potential of these online tools and the typical, misguided, self-interested corporate implementation of these platforms.

They are called social media because of their ability to foster and encourage two-way conversations and to enable tangible and enduring relationship building. But individuals – your clients – don’t build relationships with companies, they build relationships with people. People with names. With interesting backgrounds. With unique, and perhaps overlapping, personal interests.

Your dedicated, caring employees are a distinct and valuable asset that should be leveraged in your social media strategy. They’re the ones who interact with your clients daily and already have the relationships that can be strengthened and extended.

You want to play in the social media sandbox? Be social.

We’re all exhibitionists now. The amalgam of perpetually available social networking tools have enabled everyone to share their most intimate thoughts, personal feelings and illuminating (and embarrassing) photos. Now if only there were a website that infused its visitors with a modicum of common sense and decorum.

Sonny Gill wrote this morning of a west coast job seeker who posted her thoughts about landing a job with Cisco. It seems that after her interview, the applicant Tweeted:

Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.

The stupidity of this public comment cannot be overstated. Shortly after its post, the job seeker received a Tweet in reply from Cisco :

Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.

Busted.

This public idiocy followed a recent embarrassing Tweet, recounted by Peter Shankman, that caught an ad agency rep responsible for social media training (oh, the sweet irony), trashing the home city of his largest client, FedEx. On a public forum. Where everyone could see. Including the CEO of FedEx.

Time for some quick rule reminders:

1. Refrain from posting negative comments about another person or company.
2. If you break Rule #1, remember that all public comments are permanent.
3. Rule #2 means forever.
4. Share intimate thoughts and feelings in a private medium (e-mail), not a public forum.
5. If you write it, expect that it will become public someday.
6. Expect repercussions. There is a Twidiot tax. Tweet something profoundly offensive or stupid, and you can expect to suffer the consequences.

Full disclosure: I fully acknowledge that my intemperate comments below concerning my raging hatred of the dark and evil forces controlling Ticketmaster will likely prevent me from ever pursuing employment with the Ticketing Evil That Must Not Be Named. I’m ok with that.