3 simple reasons why we should never provide personal feedback through e-mail

If you are part of any type of organization, be it a global corporation, a non-lucrative organization, an education institution or simply the member of a family or a group of friends at least once, but surely a lot more than that you’ve had to provide and receive feedback on your work, your performance, your behavior, your proposals, your ideas or about the people you surround yourself with or just about whether or not you think a situation is right or wrong.

Without a doubt everybody, and I mean everybody receives and provides constant feedback all of the time, but sadly though, the fact that we do it often does not mean that we know how to do it right, no matter if we hold an executive title or if we’ve had prior training on the matter.

That is why I wanted to share 3 reasons why I am convinced that we should never provide personal feedback through e-mail:

1. All feedback needs to be provided in a timely punctual fashion. If the reason why you need to provide your feedback to someone else is so important, you cannot wait until the other person receives, reads and digest what you have to say, much less can you assume that the person is going to do it right after you click on send; so if you are going to share your point of view and provide some feedback to help another person improve or correct an action, you have the moral obligation of doing it face to face.
   
2. They say that feedback is a gift. And a gift is a present, so how exactly can you give it if you are not present? To give feedback you have to be physically and emotionally present at the place and time when you give it.
   
3. And the most important reason why I think that we must never provide feedback via e-mail, I learned from the a book titled How to Wow  from author Frances Cole, in which she mentions the results from a research done by UCLA’s Professor Emeritus in Psychology Albert Mehrabian , that states that from all our interpersonal communication only 7% of our influence comes from the words we say, 38% comes from the tone in which we say those words and 55% from our corporal expression while we say them. And since in an e-mail we cannot add any tone (38%), much less show our body language (55%) we are relaying on a 7% of probability that our message will actually and completely go through.
   

So I have to ask: How are you providing feedback now a days? Because as if these three reasons were not enough, when you give your feedback through e-mail you risk being seen as either imposing your ideas or your instructions instead of trying to help someone.

Collaboration

What is Social Media? Is a question I often hear which might not turn out to be as easy to answer.

According to the search results in Google, Social Media is:

• Social media are primarily Internet-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. ...
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media
• A category of sites that is based on user participation and user-generated content. They include social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, or My Space, social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, social news sites like Digg or Simpy, and other sites that are centered on user interaction.
  www.lazworld.com/glossary.html
• Online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives with each other.www.tvb.org/multiplatform/Multiplatform_Glossary.aspx
• Social media are works of user-created video, audio, text or multimedia that are published and shared in a social environment, such as a blog, wiki or video hosting site.
  www.capilanou.ca/help/active-cms/glossary.html
• An umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words and pictures. ...
  www.anvilmediainc.com/search-engine-marketing-glossary.html
• Software tools that allow groups to generate content and engage in peer-to-peer conversations and exchange of content (examples are YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace etc)
  www.bottlepr.co.uk/glossary.html
• Social Media is the collection of tools and online spaces available to help individuals and businesses to accelerate their information and communication needs. [Axel Schultze]
  communitymanagers.pbwiki.com/Glossary-and-Reference

 Sounds confusing? Maybe a Little. In any case, would it be safe to say that Social Media is not a medium but the use that users give to digital media?

If you had to describe in just one word what Social Media is, what would you say?

A few days ago I had the opportunity to participate with @idibuidi and @edgarmontano recording the first podcast (or poscas as they named it) for their blog zinkho.com/blog, in which we had a very interesting conversation (its in Spanish though so make sure you have someone who can translate for you) about how to describe Social Media. And we arrived at the conclusion that the best word to use is: COLLABORATION.

And even though there are a lot of reasons to describe it with this one word that we shared during our conversation, here are a few others to do so:

Conversation: if you really want to leverage this great platform you have to join the conversation, you need to listen closely to it, learn from it and contribute to it.

Objectivity: there are many different points of view and you need to be objective to comprehend what others have to share.

Loyalty: to your values, principles and ideas. It’s not that you cannot change your point of view, is just that you should not do so and compromise your principles just to please others.

Leisure: joining the conversation and sharing your thoughts with others should always be fun, even a way to give leisure to your thoughts, so there, enjoy!

Attention: if you are to become part of the conversation you better be ready to pay close attention to what others share with you, so make a real effort to understand what they are saying.

Bulk: of so much information that everybody searches for every single day, and not just in Google…Every day there is more and more people sharing their information and knowledge through different sources like Twitter, Wiki, etc.

Obligation: to participate with others. SM is not about being an observer, each and every one of us who participate in SM, have the responsibility of contributing to each other.

Respect: to all opinions and thoughts that are different from yours

Authenticity: if there is one clear rule among all the participants of the conversation today is that you have to be authentic and not pretend to be someone else.

Thoughts: are very valued  and cherished in the conversation, so don’t be afraid to share yours.

Ideas: never before had it been so easy to have your ideas reach the ears of people around the world who can help you make your ideas become a reality.

Organization: you just need to take a look at FaceBook or Linkedin to realize the huge capacity of people to get organized in groups where they share their knowledge and even resources to work towards a common end.

Networking: when had it been so easy to establish a great network and even friendships with people living across the world and whom you have never seen before in your life? Up to a few years ago your network was physically limited to those people you met in person, but now your network can reach hundreds of thousands of very talented people!

Do you want to listen to other reasons why we say that Social Media is Collaboration, don’t miss listening to podcast at www.zinkho.com/blog

 

Picture Credit: Matt Hamm

Lost Generation

I've talked a lot about the right attitude we need to have to excel and succeed during this trying times when people's hopes are challenged and as I was about to write a little more about this I came upon this great video to which I have no more to add.

Enjoy!

An important thing about the law of reciprocity.

I’m sure you’ve heard this before, in  one way or another, but you definitely have. Maybe in the form of old sayings like: “Do onto others what you want done onto you”, “An eye for an eye…”, “You get what you give”, etc. It’s the law of reciprocity that basically states that “to every action there is a reaction”. But this law, as the sayings infer does not only acts on the physical plane of things; it does not only makes sure that everything that goes up comes down, but it also acts on our actions and on our behavior.

This is why every time someone does a favor to somebody else, even if it is not openly discussed, the person doing the favor will remain expectant until the other person returns the favor; and herein lays the basic mistake.

Of course we all have to help each other and of course we’ll always need help from somebody else! And it’s easy to imagine that if you keep helping different people be successful in their jobs, in their relationships or any other aspect of their lives, at least one of them will help you in return, but that should never be your reason to help.

The law of reciprocity does not work that way. You cannot expect special favors from life in exchange of having helped someone.

The law of reciprocity, in my opinion works the other way around: you are helping others in return for all the favors and blessings you have already received in life!

You are helping others, not so someone else can help you. You’ve already received such help! You are helping others because way before, life has favored you by putting you in the right position to do precisely that: Help.

So next time you have the opportunity to help someone else, leave aside the idea that you might get something in return and instead of that be grateful for all the blessings you have, because thanks to those, you are in the position to help.

The biggest benefit of exercising a Personal Brand

Lately, as a result of a couple of previous posts and a few keynotes I delivered on this subject, I’ve received a lot of positive comments and interesting questions about Personal Branding. 
I’ve had the pleasure of having great conversations around this subject with very diverse people and no matter how different their backgrounds are, I’ve come to find a couple of constants:

1)      This is a subject that everyday captivates more and more people.

2)      They are yet not clear on what the real benefit of having a personal brand is.

Many agree that the benefit of taking care of our personal brand is being able to connect with potential employers and clients; many others think that the most important benefit is having celebrities and influencers inside their network, so they can claim they “know” or “are friends” with someone.

But in my opinion neither one of these is the main benefit of having a personal brand.

I mean, of course it is of the utmost importance to establish a strong personal and professional network, although you are making a huge mistake if your reason for doing so is to see what you can get out it. See, your main objective after connecting with an old acquaintance or a new contact, should not be to ask but to give, to offer help, to collaborate with them, offer your thoughts and/or experience, etc. In other words: to add value.

And of course having people with the likes of Paulo Coelho, Mitch Joel or Lester Wunderman among your Facebook list of friends or Twitter follower is great to build your ego; but in the end it is not about who you know but who really knows you.

No, it’s definitely neither one of these the main benefit of having a personal brand.

The real, greatest benefit of having a personal brand is to make sure you get do what you like the most and what you are best at doing.

No matter what it is you are passionate about or what your greatest strengths are, if you make sure those are aligned with your values and principles, you’ll be setting a very clear direction to move towards to.

Your activities at work, at school or in your personal life and your actions on and off line, will be a perfect reflection of such alignment and your brand will be clear to everybody else, which will, in turn, allow you to create an important network which will not only include potential employers and clients or celebrities, but also the people who, through collaboration, will help you get closer to your own dreams.

And that definitely is the biggest Benefit of having a personal brand.

 

5 steps to launch your personal brand.

Well, we’ve already talked about the importance of developing and exercising a great personal brand and how it has to be totally aligned with our values, principle, ideologies and priorities in life, mirroring these in everything we do, but how exactly can we generate awareness of our personal brand, once we’ve gone through the exercise of first establishing it?
It really is much simpler that it seems. As simple as counting to five, 5 steps to launch your personal brand.
 

1. Join the conversation and listen: this is, without a doubt the most important step to launch your personal brand. So before you start talking and preaching that you are an expert in whatever area you specialize, stop and listen to the conversation that already existed about your subject of interest. Listen closely, absorb and learn as much as you can. Take the time to know the trends and understand the general opinions in your niche, identify who the thought leaders are and define your position. And please remember, God gave us a pair of ears, a pair of eyes and just one mouth to use them accordingly.
   Now, how to start listening to the conversation? You can use different resources to find your subject’s thought leaders, like Blogcatalog.com, Bloglog.com, Technorati.com, etc, or you can just Google “Blogs about (ad your theme here) and you’ll most likely find so many people you can start learning from and collaborating with.
2. Define your differentiator: Once you’ve really listened to the conversation, analyzed it and were able to take a first look at what us going on, its time to define your position and the value that you are going to add to this dialog, which will, more likely than not, be tied to your values, principles and vision of life.
   
3. Make yourself tangible: create your space, your base if you will. This can be your blog, your personal website, a profile in one or many social networks, etc. The main object here it to have a point of contact from which you can reach out to your audience to share your thoughts, opinions, knowledge, experience, insights, networks or anything positive you can think of. By the way, two very important practices I recommend are:
   A) Get your own domain, that is yournamehere.com. It might sound exaggerated but if your name belongs to you and that is how people reach out to you off-line, why not do the same on-line? Getting your domain is easy, fast and relatively cheap, you can get it at resources like Nic.com or Godaddy.com
   B) Remember, once you share something, anything and I do mean anything on line it will be accessible to a whole lot of people and recorded for posterity, so if you want to exercise and good personal brand, be very mindful of the content you generate and share.
4. And to continue on the subject of content, make sure yours is relevant, interesting and provocative for your audience. Give them a clear benefit in return for the minutes they are giving you. Of course your content has to be authentic, original and a reflection of your interests, knowledge, etc. but unless you are generating content just for yourself (in which case I’d recommend another very good practice: writing a journal) pay attention on the interests and need of your audience and respond the them accordingly.
   
5. Open yourself to feedback and keep listening: keep in mind that exercising a personal brand has the objective of being represented in today’s worldwide conversation and the keyword here is CONVERSATION and in order for there to be one we need to listen and have good feedback. Fortunately there are different resources we can use to help us deal with this crucial task:
   A) First of all you need to keep track of all the comments and opinions your audience leave for you. Every social media platform (blogs, networks, podcasts, video sharing, etc) have the functionality of allowing users to write comments about the content you share with them. On the other hand, some of your followers might want to share their thoughts in a more private fashion so be sure to have a special email address they can contact you through. Then, open yourself to the feedback, listen to it, understand it, cherish it and respond to it. Establish a healthy interaction.
   B) Sometimes you might not get any comments in your comments section and you might get to think that no one has seen, read or listen to your stuff. Luckily for us, technology comes to the rescue and provide us with resources with which we can not only track how many visitors we got but what piece of our content is more relevant to them and which is the most popular. A tool you can use to track visits and behavior in your site is Google Analytics, its free and relatively easy to use in its basic functionality. Plus there are also some sites where you can keep track of how you rank versus other and how popular have you become, like technorati.com

 
Definitely, exercising and managing a great personal brand is no easy task and it is not something you can do in a flash or instantaneously. Seth Godin said it better when he said “It took me 6 years to have an overnight ".

Exercising a great personal brand requires work, time and focus plus honesty and authenticity; but like everything in life, those things that take really hard work from our part are the things that bring us more benefits in return.

Mekate Friday: Erasing Lines.

Authors note: This is a translation of the new entry I just posted on Mekate.com

Erasing lines.

It’s funny you know? It is said that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, yet it is precisely a line which has created the longest distance between what brands want to do to communicate with consumers and what these want to see and experiment from brands.

I mean, after working for 14 years in the advertising and communication industry and having worked with traditional advertising, direct marketing, promotions, interactive marketing; above the line, below the line, through the line, on its side and even in the middle of it, I have never found someone who could tell me who was the arrogant genius who decided that communication could be divided and even classified in to above and below.

I can almost imagine a character worthy of the biggest villain in a James Bond movie, Siamese cat on lap and all, locked behind the crystals of the highest floor in his corporate tower, which event though has hosted his throne for years, now has been transformed into his very own cell.

Why? Let me elaborate. According to the ATL/BTL division, a medium is considered above the line when it has a massive reach and below the line when it establishes a one on one contact with consumers, right?

 Then what happens when we have a platform like the Internet where we can reach 27.4 million people in Mexico alone and 1.172 billion worldwide? Should we consider it Above the Line then? But what about its ability of helping us reach those 27.4 mm users on a one to one basis? Should we then call it Below the Line?

And what about all the other marketing communication disciplines like P.R, Shopper Marketing or Direct Marketing with which we can also reach millions of people with one single campaign? (Just ask the postal service who their biggest clients are, I’m sure you’ll find some big brands among them).

You see, from my personal and professional perspective, the strategies, tactics, actions and even media cannot be divided into above or below the line anymore, in fact they never should have! The efforts that a very few people are still doing to keep this kind of division alive so they can still try to keep the thinning budgets on their hands are facing and big and inevitable change.

Today any marketing communications professional, be it a strategic planner, media planners, marketing director, brand manager, creative director, copy writers on an accoutn executive, must understand that fortunately for our industry, our client’s and specially for consumers, there are very diverse disciplines and media that allow us to connect with consumers in many different ways, thus letting brands acomplish their ever growing objectives while making themselves available for consumers whenever, wherever and however they want to contact us.

So put this into practice: erase the line once and for all and stop preaching that you do “integrated campaigns” and really start doing so. Do this and I’m sure you’ll have loyal customers for a long time.