Christine

Board of Directors 101: How to Run a Meeting

Josh Kopelman recently pointed out an excellent post by Guy Kawasaki on the Art of the Board Meeting. Kawasaki's recommendations are to the point, and right on. These three recommendations in particular struck home, so I wanted to share them:

1. 360-degree views are too big for a board meeting. Focus on this 30-degree view:

• What's going right?
• What's going wrong?
• What do you want the board to do?

2. Don't surprise your board.

• If it's bad news, call everyone in advance to inform them 1:1 and let them vent/cool down privately.
• If it's a new idea or change in company direction, get a discussion going in advance so that you don't have to do a hard sell during the meeting.
• Don't ever assume that the board has read the 60-page document that you emailed them the night before.

3. Build a balanced board, and let your CEO lead its meetings. Kawasaki presents a handful of established archetypes, from the Customer to the Jerry Maguire, that together build a strong support team.

For more information, just head over to Kawasaki's original post. Thanks to Josh for the link!

Quick Picks on How to Market via Social Media

Stopping in to an overcapacity panel on 'Marketing Without Marketing' at SXSW 2008, I picked up a few great sound bites on how to reach out to customers 'without being skeevy':

Top 5 Tips for Hosting a Customer Community

Brian Oberkirch of Small Good Thing moderated a wide-ranging exploration of customer service communities at yesterday's Customer Service is the New Marketing summit. (Flickr photo by dougfl07.) Matt Mullenweg of Automattic  summed up the panel's threads well with a single metaphor: If everyone showed up to your house for a party, would you stay away? Probably not. You'd stay at home, make sure that everyone had a drink, keep weirdos from doing strange things off in the corner, and herd guests into the right room given their numbers and general mood.

How does this simple concept apply to hosting a customer community? Based on the panel discussion, I've brought together these 5 key success factors:

Alex Frankel on How Employees Create Brand

How are brands defined by their internal culture? How are customer-facing employees defining and marketing their company's brand? Alex Frankel, author of Punching In, came to Customer Service is the New Marketing to share his undercover experiences as a corporate culture chameleon.

 

Virgin: 200 Businesses, One Culture and One Brand

As the company lore goes, Virgin started in the 1970's as a student newspaper. As Richard Branson decided to also mail out records, he quickly moved into retail after seeing how easy it was to break 33" LPs in the post. Then? Producing records. And then? The airline business. Today? Communications, money, health, renewables, and charity, with over 200 companies and 48,500 employees. Michael Murphy came to Customer Service is the New Marketing to talk about how to provide the same Virgin customer experience across all of them.

Google, Flickr, Rackspace, and Socialtext Agree: Community is Key to Scaling Customer Service

An impressive lineup of mission- and consumer-critical online services discussed scalability today at Customer Service is the New Marketing. Marc Hedlund of Wesabe encouraged these market leaders to trot out their own best practices and practical suggestions for handling success. The conversation boiled down to two recommendations: #1: Get your community involved. #2: Integrate your community's voice into your internal operations.

How The Geek Squad Propagates a Service Culture

The mercurial Robert Stephens is not only a two-time college dropout, he's also the founder of The Geek Squad. Stephens flew out to Customer Service is the New Marketing this week to discuss how his company's culture dictates not just customer service, but the entire customer experience.

Zappos Shares Secrets of 75% Repeat Business

Zappos was started in 1999 when the founder saw that there wasn't anything as easy as Amazon.com for buying shoes. But how did it survive the bubble? And why does it continue to enjoy steady growth? Tony Hsieh, Zappos CEO, shared some company secrets at today's Customer Service is the New Marketing summit.

Leading Brands Demonstrate Best Practices in Customer Service

The emerging top topic for customer service professionals is how technology enables genuine, two-way conversations between companies and customers. Customer Service is the New Marketing (streaming live today) is an important catalyst for this industry-wide conversation.

Company-Customer Pact Needs Your Support

We all need to trust the people with whom we do business. Unfortunately, most of us don’t – and since this is so frustrating, I was happy to work with Get Satisfaction this month to draft a provisional “Company-Customer Pact.” Our intention was to create a simple, usable framework for company-customer interaction. Ideally, one that could be recommended and adopted by consumers and companies alike.

The provisional draft will be publicly announced today at Customer Service is the New Marketing, and has been posted at CCPact.com. We're actively seeking community support, as well as public comments. Support and comments can be voiced right on the wiki pages. Having your voice included would be terrific.

Please do forward this post to folks that you’d like to hear in the conversation, or that you think would be interested in building better company-customer relationships. With time and shared good intentions, we can together change how business is done.

Quick Post on Philanthropy and Microlending

Brad Garland posted a question earlier this evening on how to best apply his small company's burgeoning interest in charitable works. A quick Seesmic exchange that followed touched on not only what his team had to give (some time and cash on an ongoing basis, and a one-time donation of equipment and hardware), but also what outcomes they were interested in. What change do they want to see in world? Given that change, how can they contribute towards making it? More time and effort will be going into this topic for the team, since that's a big question.

Zappos Sets the Bar for Customer Service

I've always been a fan of Zappos, both as a longtime paying customer, and as an admirer of their ability to tough it out during the Bad Times. Tonight, I followed Fred Wilson's post and discovered just how far their exemplary customer service team will go - Zappos not only takes great care of its customers, but also supports the personal touches of its people as they remember to be human.

So, here's my small contribution to word of mouth marketing and grassroots brand development: Shop Zappos.

Key Strategic Lessons for Facebook App Developers

Several successful Facebook app developers shared their experiences at the recent Community Next gathering. After listening to the early F8 cohort, here are the strategic lessons that stand out:

Sobering, Joyful Life Lessons: Last Lecture of Prof. Randy Pausch

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand." So speaks Carnegie-Mellon computer science professor Randy Pausch, who delivered his final lecture in anticipation of dying next month from pancreatic cancer. "I'm in excellent health right now -- It's the greatest thing of cognitive dissonance that we will ever see...I'm in better shape than most of you." Prof. Pausch, who is the 46-year-old director of the Alice Software Project, co-founder of the Entertainment Technology Center, a husband, and a father of three, has lived life both richly and well.

Digg Shares Lessons on User Revolt Management

Over time, it's been primarily civil within the digg community. Recently, however, there was a minor furor around the HD-DVD encryption key being distributed via digg. Visits to the site were dominated by a vocal minority on one side, regulators on the other, and digg stuck in the middle with its hijacked home page. Digg CEO Jay Adelson hosted a conversation today at Foo Camp to discuss their experience.

Burning Man Goes Green: Call for Pavilion Participation

Last year's Burning Man community spoke loudly about starting efforts to make the event more eco-friendly. How can we reduce the playa's carbon footprint? How can we recycle or reuse  building materials, food supplies, bottles and cans, or other discards?  Should there be requirements imposed upon art cars? And so on.

Michael Arrington's Four Keys to the Future of Media

Michael Arrington visited Toronto today for mesh, Canada's web conference, and shared his perspective on the future of media. Through the free-flowing dialogue, these four keys stood out as essential in media's evolution from traditional to social:

Web 2.0 Expo Ignite! Winners Focus on Being Human

Web 2. 0 Expo sponsored an event called Ignite! earlier this week. Ignite! was a free-for-all in which anyone could prepare a five-minute pitch of Something Interesting. The audience-selected winners were given a shot at the big stage this morning:

Web 2.0 Inspires Architecture 2.0, and World a Better Place

Architecture for Humanity creates sustainable, low-cost housing for both impoverished and disaster-hit communities. James Baty of AFH is here at Web 2.0 Expo to evangelize 'Architecture 2.0,' which is an exciting and innovative example of Web 2.0 principles:

Astia Names VC Diversity Award Winners

Astia (FKA the Women's Technology Cluster) today presented its Third Annual National Venture Capital Awards. Kara Swisher of the Wall Street Journal was the evening's host, and let slip some choice bits such as "Don Imus remains an asshole, even if he's been fired." There were also a few sharp statistics shared - for example, the national average of investment funding for women-led or women-founded companies is only 4%. Tonight's winners far outstripped this with an average of 25%. Here's who was celebrated:

7 Tips for Successful Social Network Campaigns

It's a well-established Web 2.0 trend that people are gathering themselves into online social networks. Mobilizing these individuals and communities into action, however, is still an emergent practice. At N-TEN's 2007 Nonprofit Technology Conference, folks gathered to share best practices on how to not only effectively spread a message using social networks, but also drive people to take action. These seven tips are worth noting:

Opportunity Hacks for the Researcher

The folks at Guidewire Group (Mike Sigal and Chris Shipley) are putting on a workshop next week for National Science Foundation (NSF) funded scientists that aspire to be entrepreneurs. They're looking to collect 'opportunity hacks' from more experienced startup folks - e.g., how do you identify which opportunity is worth chasing?

How to Make Money Like a Porn Star

For the sake of argument, let's assume that you are able to create content that people want to consume. How do you monetize it? The adult content industry continues to lead the way in monetizing content, adopting new technologies, and testing distribution models. At SXSW Interactive, porn publishers gathered to share best business practices with the next generation of mainstream media. (Disclosure note: Panelist links undoubtedly go directly to adult content - but I'm not sure, since I was too chicken to click through myself!)

Kathy Sierra Teaches "Human-ness" at SXSW

Kathy Sierra took her theme of passionate users to the next level at SXSW Interactive. Specifically, Sierra posed this question: Why do people go in person to a presentation that's being blogged live, twittered, and videotaped? Why are we all here?

Top 10 Mobile Marketing Campaigns

A fun and dynamic tour of top mobile campaigns was a highlight at yesterday's Mobile Marketing Forum. Eric Wheeler, Senior Partner with Ogilvy Interactive, and Gene Keenan, VP Mobile Services for Isobar International, shared a number of interesting campaigns put together by mobile marketers. These are interesting not only for brand promotion, but also for building community at any organization. In no particular order, here are the Top 10: