Avengers Assemble in Avengers #151

As The Avengers movie hits the big screen, you will have a chance to be a real, live hero. Are you ready?

First, meet the villain: Torrent and his evil henchmen Piracy and Complacency.

If you haven’t met Torrent before, you probably will when this movie hits the screen. At some point, someone will introduce you to this true villainy. Evil, unspeakable.

Here’s how Torrent works. You can pay for the overpriced movie ticket (and it IS overpriced!) or you can succumb to Torrent’s siren call.

You will read about the unfathomable salaries of the actors in the film. And, of course, the giddy box office reports of the millions the movie makes. With all this money, why should you pay? Torrent’s henchman Piracy have copies for your 1080p home theater. For free!

It’s a victimless crime. Who gets hurt? Those celebrity millionaires? They don’t need your $12 (or $16 in 3D). So burn a digital copy. What about the collateral damage of this battle between the evil studios and the everyman? Movie theaters are closing. They can’t compete with your pirated copy. Oh well, tough luck. Adapt or die, as they say.

The marquee actor isn’t feeling the pinch, but the people who work “below the line” do. They’re the people trying to make an honest living in special effects, stunts, and costuming. Well, adapt or die.

Go find something that isn’t so easy for you to steal. Steal. Yeah, I said it. Stealing. Doesn’t that make you an inadvertent henchmen? That’s Complacency’s super power. He makes you think stealing is fine.

Temptation is sooooo easy, especially when you will almost certainly never get caught. And, let’s just state for the record, you can steal this movie and not get caught.

Captain America gives the "Avengers Assemble" battle cry from Avengers #16

Be the Hero Or…or you may be moved by the unselfish nature of heroes. That’s what we cheer for, isn’t it? We love the everyman hero who chooses to do the right thing. That’s cool.

We have real-life heroes all around us. Heck, Newark’s mayor Corey Booker ran into a burning building to save a neighbor. That’s heroic. Soldiers who enlist. EMT volunteers who rush to your house in the middle of the night when you dial 911. These are big heroes.

Then there’s the working-class hero. The person who goes to work every day to support their families. They’re heroes too, and some of them make movies. Some make comic books that become movies. Steal from them too. Hmm. Doesn’t feel as good, does it?

Here’s how you defeat Complacency. If someone offers you a free copy of The Avengers movie or torrents of the comic books, don’t take them. “No thanks,” is a good start.

Next, you can defeat Piracy. Watch what happens when you don’t connect the torrent stream. The stolen goods stop coming to your house. You, my friend and ally, are becoming a hero.

Defeating the henchmen is easy compared to taking down the real villain. The genie is out of the bottle and far too many people enjoy his magic. There’s a great old quote (not sure who said it), “character is who you are when nobody else is looking.”

Would Captain America be a consistent hero if he was portrayed as a guy stealing things from people? No, that would be inconsistent with the image of what we expect from a hero. Stealing from hard-working Americans — especially when you can easily afford the stolen goods — would be inconsistent characterization of Captain America.

Without choice, there is no conflict. Without conflict, there is no story. Choose to be a hero.

If you can afford the 1080p television, you can afford the movie you’ll watch on that system. Again, make the right choice.

Fight for right, even when other people tell you that “sharing” isn’t stealing. It’s stealing and you know it. Don’t do it.

Be. The. Hero. Now raise your fist high in the air, and say it with me…

Avengers Assemble!

Google Analytics to measure your social media campaign

Stop. Before you go any further in this blog about social media marketing, stop and ask yourself, “am I ready to do what’s required for my campaigns?”

Doing the right thing isn’t always easy, particularly in Marketing. That’s because modern Marketing isn’t easy anymore.

It’s hard and it requires math. (I know I just lost about half of you when I said the other M word…math.)

Today’s marketer must be part mathematician, part magician, and seemingly omniscient. Fortunately, there’s an app for that.

I’m not kidding. The app is “analytics.” (Okay, analytics is more than just an app, but I’m working on my segues.) But if you don’t use analytics and other appropriate measurements, you can’t measure your social media campaign.

Getting Started by Creating a Baseline
Before you start your campaign, decide what exactly return on investment (ROI) is to you. Is it getting your target audience to register for messaging? Download or view a multimedia asset? Visit a particular page on your site?

These activities or page views are usually called key performance indicators (KPIs). That’s just a neat way to mark the kinds of activity that measure intent. Not all KPIs are worth the same amount to you, so let’s not pretend “registration” offers the same marketing value as “watched a video.”

Now, if you’ve been running an analytics software package like Omniture or Google Analytics, you probably have a baseline of information. So, for example, if you want “more” people to download your PDF or watch your video, go check your analytics and determine how many are watching already. If 100 people are day are watching and downloading, you will call that your baseline.

Now that you have your baseline, you will use this to measure the impact of your social media activity. This can be online or offline activity, as you will quickly see.

Best of all, you haven’t had to look at any math yet.

Changes in KPIs Help Measure ROI
With your baseline data, you were able to measure that you were receiving, say, 100 registration per month to your Super Awesome Newsletter.

And since you know that people registered to your newsletter are more likely to buy Your Stuff, you definitely want more people to register. Maybe, just maybe, you also know that people who subscribe to the Super Awesome Newsletter have a yearly value of $200.

In order to give this next example, let’s just say you did Activity #1. This can be a big social media push, a search engine marketing (SEM) campaign, or even a television appearance on Dateline (hey, someone has to be on Dateline!).

Immediately following your campaign, you watch your KPIs to see if Activity #1 has moved the needle. And since you are a fantabulous marketer, you can see that Activity #1 has increased your monthly registrations from 100 per month to 150 per month.

Now, take a deep breath. Math isn’t hard. You can see that 100 to 150 is a 50% increase. Easy.

You can also measure that your KPI (valued at $200) increased by 50. So 50 times $200 equals $10,000.

The Parabolic Arc and Sustained Lift
If you’ve made it this far, it’s because you realize that this is all very doable. Most campaigns aren’t this basic, but sometimes…sometimes they are. And if they are not, then apply the same principals and scale them to fit your needs.

Usually your campaign is going to have a lifecycle. That is, even an appearance on Dateline is only going to drive traffic for a certain amount of time. It could be a few hours or a few days, but unless you keep pushing Activity #1, traffic will inevitably start to fall.

You might see a nice arc that begins to rise with Activity #1, peaks, and then slopes back down. Sometimes this is a sharp spike, but in most cases, it’s the kind of curve you used to draw in geometry. (Geometry. Shudder.)

But then there’s this funny thing called sustained lift that sometimes happens at the end of your campaign. You see your campaign rise, peak, and fall, as expected. If you’re lucky (and you’ve built your site in the right way), you may see a sustained lift.

Sustained lift? Sure. You started at 100, increased to 150, and returned to 110. That 100 to 110 difference is your sustained lift. The 110 becomes your new baseline.

Your extra 10 registrations to the Super Awesome Newsletter is $2,000 multiplied by the number of months it sustains at this level.

Again, campaigns aren’t usually this simple, but for illustration purposes, you can see that 110 is better than 100. That needs to be part of your math because now you’re going to tie it all back to ROI.

Final ROI Calculations
This is the last math, I promise.  Let’s say that Activity #1 cost you $2,000. It could be dollars spent, your valuable time on social, or that coveted appearance on Dateline (travel expenses).

Was Activity #1 worth your effort? Well, if you spent $2,000 to get $10,000, the math suggests it was.

If you do no other activities for 6 months — and you see that your sustained lift stays at 110 per month — you can add another 60 to your measurable KPIs. That’s 60 x $200 = $12,000.

As it turns out, the sustained lift was more valuable in ROI than the actual campaign. If you weren’t prepared to measure this, you could easily miss this little fact.

It’s Not Magic, It’s Math
So, if you’re a Marketer and not a Mathematician, you may be wondering what just happened. Is Marketing really this easy?

No, not really, but it’s also not that hard either. I mean, if you isolate your complete campaign to one activity, it’s possible to measure your social media campaign. Most campaigns are not a super-simplified example, like the one I illustrated here.

But Social Media Marketing and other types of Marketing are measurable. Sometimes it’s easy and other times it is maddeningly difficult, but generally the principals are the same.

The basics:

• Set up your analytics
• Identify your KPIs
• Measure your baseline
• Run your campaign
• Measure the change

Marketing is far more complicated than this, but even you can do this. Larger campaigns for bigger brands are definitely more complicated, so you may need to work with specialists to get more accurate reporting.

The best part is that you will soon be able to measure the impact of your individual and combined traffic drivers. It can be a social media campaign on Pinterest or paid search engine advertising on Google. Measuring your ROI will tell you where to invest your time, energy, and out of pocket expenditures.

It will not be easy, but it is essential to modern digital marketing. And if you are really successful, the next math you need may be to calculate your bonus.

Guy's Guide to Pinterest

The statistics are incredible. According to ComScore estimates, Pinterest is the fastest growing social network ever.

In this age of social networking sites, you’d think that we had enough places for people to like and share stuff. Apparently not.

But a curious thing happened on their way to becoming an Internet phenomenon. Pinterest became an overwhelmingly female destination. By some estimates Pinterest is to 50% to 70% female. Everyone has an opinion about why Pinterest attracted so many women and what it means for social media marketing.

If you’re a male, you’re probably wondering why you should bother with Pinterest. Well, for one, it’s really kind of fun. (I hated typing that sentence, but it’s true.) It’s also a platform that shows huge potential for marketing and branding, since people are sharing the products and services that they love. If your campaign includes content marketing, you know that great product images can help your brand message go viral.

For a change, though, I am not here to talk about your content strategy or anything marketing-y like that. I’m here to help the fellas out there get started with Pinterest.

Compete.com data on Pinterest growth

Getting Started
As of this writing, you can’t just sign up for Pinterest (male or female). You must be “invited” by someone already on the network. This is a great strategy that creates the illusion of Pinterest being an exclusive social network.

If you’re not sure how to get started, post a note on Facebook asking to be invited. The first time you sign up, Pinterest will prompt you to set up a few “boards.” This is the core of how Pinterest works. You “pin” things that you like or want to these “boards.”

Pinterest will offer a few suggested boards, where you can organize your pins. These are not he-man categories, but you can change them later. And you probably will.

Pinboard Empire
Once you’ve signed up, you’ll notice that Pinterest has a nice way of connecting you with your friends from Facebook. Of course, since most of my initial connections were female, my first few days on Pinterest was wading through fashion, things for the home, and inspiring messages about getting into shape.

Pinterest isn’t really like Facebook, which is a balance of text, videos, and pictures. Pinterest is anchored by images, so you get a cascade of graphics. If you’re a guy like me, you’ll probably be amazed at how many different shoes there are out there. I had no idea.

First, take a mental inventory of stuff you like. If you’re into style, then keep the My Style Pinboard. Nobody said you have to be a poorly dressed troglodyte. You can even pin photos of shoes, if you want.

Next, think about your passions. How about fast cars? Make a board and do a search for your favorite hot rod. Pinterest searches with either (a) regular keywords (e.g., cars) or (b) with hashtags (e.g., #cars). Each of these will give you different results.

If you seen an image you like, you can pin it to your board, in this case “Cars” or “My Dream Cars.” You can also “like” an image and not pin it to your own board.

Starting to get the idea? Good, it’s not that difficult and you still haven’t surrendered your manliness.

Eliminating Shoes
So you’ve created your first few boards, which stakes out your personal preferences. You’ll probably have a mix of interests that begin to reveal your inner dude.

Pinterest is geek friendly. You visually embrace and connect your passions. My boards include “Comic Book Covers,” “Marketing,” and “Station Wagons.” Yeah, I love station wagons. No joke.

Oh, and pins must be rated PG-13. Smut attracts the ire of the community. So if your passion is Jenna Jameson, you may want to post photos of her fully clothed. Or skip that testosterone-fueled pinboard all together. Let’s not over share.

Your friends may pin too many pictures of must-have shoes and super-cute dresses. You can either (a) unfollow this person completely (a bit harsh if this is a friend) or (b) unfollow the pinboard with the shoes and dresses.

Just unfollow individual boards that don’t interest you. This is a social situation and you want to stay connected to your friends on some level.

From Pumps to Punts
In the first few days, you may find yourself unfollowing multiple boards. If you remove stuff that bores you (shoes bore me), then you’re ready to add stuff that fascinates you.

Do you have a favorite sports team? Love football? Search Pinterest for your team, and you’ll discover people posting photos, logos, and interesting articles. If you dig more, you may find that your favorite football team is officially on Pinterest.

In search results, Pinterest gives you three ways to filter your results. These include Pins, Boards, and People. Search for your favorite team and click on People to see if they are on Pinterest. If so, give them a follow.

Personally, I love cars, comic books, and movies. Search on these topics and you’ll discover pins and people who share your interest. At first, you might just re-pin images like Star Wars movie posters. But soon, you may discover rare Star Wars photographs and graphics you never knew existed. As a fan, this is where it gets fun.

Marketing on Pinterest
Many different companies are trying to figure out how to utilize Pinterest as a marketing platform. They’re having trouble being heard above the noise on Twitter and Facebook, so they’re turning to Pinterest to connect with enthusiasts.

Sports teams, comic book companies, and automobile manufacturers are posting rare and interesting photos of their products. They’re fishing where the fish are…and we’re happy to be hooked.

If you show me a great comic book cover, I will re-pin it. This becomes a peer-to-peer endorsement. I am now helping your marketing asset go viral. If marketers want to market to me, I don’t mind because I control the way the content is curated.

Pretty soon, you’ll want to share original images on Pinterest. Right now, you have to install a “pin it” button on your browser. It’s pretty easy and it helps you share stuff that you discover on external websites. That’s right, you bring content to Pinterest to share it with your friends.

Feel free to post pictures of fire-breathing super bikes and cars (even the ones that suggest you’re compensating for something). It’s your testosterone, pin it any way you want. You can also pin images of your favorite books, musicians, and graphic designs. If there’s an image or video, you can share it.

Pinterest is the next step in content curation and content strategy. It’s easy, fun, and mildly addictive. These days, I spend more time on Pinterest than I do on Facebook, Flickr, Google+ or Twitter.

Get Going, Guys
So there you have it. If you’re a guy, don’t be afraid of Pinterest. It will not diminish you as a man, nor will it make you the object of ridicule. It’s just a smart, well-organized social network that uses pictures as a sharing paradigm. It just happens to have a lot of pictures of fashion, but you can work around that. Or not, if you prefer.

It takes a bit of time, but you will find as much male-oriented content as any other social network site. You can adjust the content streams easily, so that Pinterest becomes your personal stream of content from GQ, Men’s Health, Sports Illustrated, Spike TV, Sylvester Stallone, Hot Rod, and Marvel Comics.

And if you really like Laura Ashley, skinny jeans, and cute-shoes, well it can be that too. Just don’t expect me to follow your pins on shoes.

Additional Reading:

• Pinterest Is For Girls, Gentlemint Is For Boys
• The Bro’s Guide To Pinterest
• The Marketers Guide to Pinterest – Infographic
• Compete.com data on Pinterest growth

Guy's Guide to Pinterest

Did that lightbulb in your head just go on? Maybe it's coming from the Idea Etherverse.

In my line of work, people talk a lot about creativity. As a content strategist and copywriter at a marketing agency, people look to my creative services team for fresh ideas.

They appreciate unique angles, bursts of inspiration, and the proverbial lightbulb-over-the-head.

Yet, that creativity doesn’t just come from “the creatives.” Not at all.

Ideas can come from anyone in any role, if you encourage people to express their own ideas. Account managers, project managers, quality assurance testers, proofreaders, and traffic coordinators have come up with ideas that rival the best copywriters, art directors, and other people typically associated with “ideas.”

The problem? Most “non creative” people feel boxed in by the words printed on their business cards. They incorrectly assume they are less qualified to share new ideas or whatever. It’s really just “whatever.”

The Big Secret Revealed: Where Creativity Comes From

For a few years, I worked as a professional comic book writer (which was outstanding training for new media). At comic book conventions, fans and aspiring creators would sometimes ask where I got my ideas.

If you’ve ever sat at a table and watched a parade of people come to your table to ask the same question, you start to challenge yourself to come up with unique and entertaining answers. This is partially to entertain myself, partially to entertain them, and mainly because I don’t have a really good answer.

There are a few creators out there who have come up with funny, snarky, and downright ridiculous versions of the same answer. According to many sources, famed writer Harlan Ellison gets his ideas in Poughkeepsie.

A good friend and occasional collaborator Darick Robertson once told me his theory of creativity. He may have heard a variation of this, but he customized it for me. And I will pass it along to you with my little spin.

Darick suggested that there is an Idea Etherverse that floats just above our consciousness. It’s there all the time and different creative ideas drift past laconically just waiting to be taken down and nurtured. These ideas are as ethereal as ghosts, until you build something around them. They are free for the taking.

Everyone has access to the same Idea Etherverse, so if you let the idea pass you buy, it will float past the next person. That’s why so many people say things like, “I had that same idea!” If there is an Idea Etherverse, then yes, they may have had the same idea.

They probably just didn’t take the idea down and nurture it. So it floated away.

The Idea Etherverse and You

I really like this Idea Etherverse because it places the onus of responsibility on the person who has an idea. For example, you.

Creative services people are more in tune with the Idea Etherverse, even if they don’t call it that. Their antenna is extended, ready to receive the ideas floating around. Because of their role in the workplace (especially in advertising and marketing agencies), they have the confidence to explore and express their ideas.

It is very easy for me as a content strategist or copywriter (depending on the project) to turn to another person in creative services and bounce around an idea. It may be something completely kooky, but usually a fellow creative understands that ideas are fragile and require some nurturing. There may not be a direct, sellable solution, but they will usually play through the scenario of “what if we tried this new idea…?” This is very liberating and often results in new paths and ideas.

Unfortunately roles considered “non creative” may not have that immediate access to kindred creatives. That shouldn’t stand in your way of plucking ideas and exploring them. Pull someone from creative services to the side and share your idea. Occasionally, you’ll find someone who thinks “idea generation” should remain the exclusive domain of “creatives.” If that happens, find someone else.

You may need to tweak your pitch and approach. Or you just may need to find someone who is on your creative wavelength. Interestingly enough, I’ve found that the senior team leaders are the most receptive to ideas from unexpected places, since they just want good ideas. In fact, you might be surprised at how receptive they are to your enthusiasm and creativity.

How to Get Started

The first step is yours, so move forward in a relevant and appropriate way. If you feel an idea floating above you in the Idea Etherverse, gently pull it down and make it yours. Nurture it for a day or three. I find that a new idea is better when you’ve had a chance to sleep on it.

Next, find someone who you consider a creative thinker. Grab a cup of coffee. Maybe sit for a quick lunch. If you’re looking for someone to literally help you develop, evolve, and co-champion the idea, it wouldn’t hurt to spring for lunch. Even on my busiest days, I can easily be bribed with sushi.

After that, sketch out a few ideas in whatever medium works best for you. I like PowerPoint because it gives me the flexibility to mock up shapes and text in a rapid 2D prototype. This is an important step because you should save the details while they are fresh in your head.

Not all of your new ideas will be good, nor will all of them be bad. By sharing them, you will develop your creative muscles, so that you know how to nurture your new ideas. It takes practice to learn how to effectively pluck something from the Idea Etherverse and turn it into something. So don’t give up too easily, especially in the face of early flops.

Sometimes you simply need to defend your creative ideas. Other times, you just have to be willing to move on to the next idea.

Being creative is a state of mind. Not only is creativity needed in the workplace, it is often rewarded in many ways. So pull down an idea, sleep on it a few nights, and start collaborating with a friend.

And if you happen to be in New Jersey and want to share your ideas with me…? I like spicy, crunchy tuna rolls.