It’s the “listening” part that we trip up on the most. To some extent I think that’s natural for humans, perhaps even more profound in a newly social (some would say self-obsessed) scene where everyone has something to say.

In a marketing context, we fail to listen when we become so convinced that our product or service can solve problems, that we start telling our customers all about how. Even in spaces not built for that purpose.

Vendors in investigators’ clothing

In the past few weeks, I’ve noticed on a couple of the investigators’ listservs that marketers are starting to become more vocal. I include myself in that group. I’ve put press releases out to those groups, notifying them that new training (free or fee) was becoming available. I’ve also linked to articles written by clients, as well as my own.

I would never do this if I were not absolutely convinced that the information was valuable to members. But therein lies the rub. If I think I’m providing value, and I am noticed, then the other marketers think they’re missing out. Indeed, a client has taken me to task for mentioning one client but not them.

As I told him, I’m very picky about what I put out to listservs. I don’t want to look like a spammer. But if enough of us put out “valuable” information (or contact members off list)… we will all look like spammers. Worse, the listservs will lose membership. That means investigators not connecting with each other for critically needed resources.

The owner of one listserv is a good friend, and I emailed him to ask his advice. Would he prefer we sent him stuff first, for him to choose to put on his list? Or would he prefer silence? Perhaps the biggest question of all: do vendors belong on the restricted listservs to begin with?

Many LinkedIn groups say no, because they’ve faced these problems before. (The listowner who’s a friend invited me when all I was doing was trade journalism.) Some groups are so sensitive that they’ll go as far as to ban marketing members.

Thing is, groups and listservs like these provide valuable intelligence about what problems our target markets are having, what their needs are. That’s true even if we’re attending training and demo’ing products in the field. Because we can never know what it’s really like to sit behind those desks.

What it means to give value

I’ve blogged before about the need for marketers to be more a part of the community, and a listserv is just a microcosm of the larger investigative community. Sure – it may be set up as a very simple information exchange, where members mainly ask for contacts at ISPs and phone companies. But it’s still a community where the investigators trust one another to give them the information they need – that they actually need – not just what we think they need.

“But how do we get people to come to our webinar?” we cry. “Or subscribe to our blog? Or attend our training?” Short answer: not like we’re trying to get them now.

We should be linking to articles that have nothing to do with our clients and flipping through our own Rolodexes for people who can help them. We should also be asking listmembers for help, not “market research,” but as real investigators who use real processes to work their cases:

How do their systems work? How don’t they work? What do they need? What can we do better – not just better than the competition, but better than ourselves? Again: listening, the kind that encourages listmembers to consider dropping by our site, where all kinds of lovely content awaits them – the kind that not only shows our product’s or service’s value, but shows it to them, because it was born from their living feedback.

Forensics practitioners, how would you prefer we marketers interact with you? Marketers, what can we improve about the way we attract attention?

Image: bareknuckleyellow via Flickr

So, we’re all busy. There are things we’d like to be doing that aren’t getting done because, even though we know they will improve business in the long run, we aren’t willing to take a chance on just how long that run will be.

Yet, we can’t afford to ignore these things either. Things like white papers that raise brand awareness and generate leads; Wikipedia entries that increase one’s chances of being found on search, if properly written; case studies that show what our customers are doing with our products and services. These and other forms of content (including the blogging I wrote about in the last post) deserve as much attention as careful customer support.

How do you make the time?

With one client, I realized recently that our marketing plan had overextended itself. I work primarily with small businesses and few employees; I do as much work as consulting how to do it, which means I’m overextended too. How do I get clients to pay attention? I wondered.

Answer 1: Build it into what you’re already doing, when you’re already doing it. Not long ago I looked at my 700+ Google Reader blogs and worried that I was missing out on important information about both marketing and digital forensics. I knew I had to carve out time to read, even if I couldn’t read everything in one sitting.

My morning ritual is about reading: email, news articles, social sites. It wakes up my brain so that I can write. Later in the day, distracted and worn down, I can’t absorb reading as easily (unless it’s from a book). I decided to read my blogs in the morning for about an hour before I start the day’s “real” work.

Answer 2: Know what it does for your business. I knew one client wanted to use Twitter, but used it only sporadically. Thinking about his schedule, I realized he probably wasn’t making time for it because while he recognized what it could do, he had no way of knowing whether this would pay off.

Solution: I showed how we could tie together webinars (and other content), the company blog, and the client’s Twitter account in a way that would increase our online presence and get people to interact more with our brand. I also introduced the idea of hashtagging, which combined with web analytics could make all the interaction easier to measure.

Answer 3: Pull in other people.

• Got channel partners? Enlist their expertise on white papers you can both use.
• Too many tech support calls? Think about whether investing time to build an online support community will pay off as your strongest customers start to help newer customers solve problems.
• No time to blog? Tap the partners and/or any part-time employees – and think about asking customers to guest blog.

Content marketing often seems like a bigger chunk than you can chew, when you let it. But if you carefully select only certain projects according to your business goals and untapped resources, and figure out a way you can fit them into your workday/week, they’ll become more manageable – and pave the way for larger scale projects.

Need help figuring out how content can fit in your work life? Email me at christa at christammiller dot com (two m’s in the domain please) and let’s talk!

photo credit: emma.kate

Answer: they want to. But they also wanted to make sure they got it right. The right people needed to be blogging, and they needed to be able to devote time to it.

This reply mirrored what I have heard from other marketing and PR professionals since social media caught on in the general business community (about 18 months ago), and the issues are more complicated than many suspect:

Who will do the blogging?

For a software firm or forensic team, “marketing” may not be the best answer. Marketing should certainly monitor social, and measure the results of social campaigns. But blogging is not Twitter or Facebook, where status updates often rely on company and industry news. Blogging is far more in-depth, and requires solid knowledge of the issues if it is to promote the business. Some marketers may well be able to fill this role, but can they do as well as software engineers, the C-suite, or the people performing the exams?

When will they blog?

Everyone – marketers, C-suite, engineers – is busy. Blogging takes time and energy; it’s not just a matter of throwing press releases up there and calling it good. It’s meant to show clients and prospects what your business is made of. You have to make the time to think, to interpret and analyze.

How will they blog?

Just because a person knows the issues and has the time doesn’t mean they have the right voice. An overly academic, technical, pedantic or even casual tone and word usage will probably not work to attract the customers you want.

Many forensic firms do have blogs, and many of those are very good. I suspect it’s easier for examiners to blog than it is for a software firm; examiners like to be able to help one another, and while software developers do too, the information they hold is much more proprietary. Of those who do blog, I’ve found, their information focuses on techniques for examiners.

All of this, of course, comes back to why your firm has a blog. What aspect of your business are you looking to advance?

• Do you want to be known as a “thought leader” on forensic tools and techniques and legal issues?
• Are you a software engineer who is looking to “crowdsource” the forensic community in order to make your tools better?
• Are you a private investigator trying to educate the public, or a trainer trying to educate your audience?
• Or does your firm incorporate a little of all of these, and more?

The goal, or goals, comes first. Then the plan, including the people, to execute, including how to tell whether the plan is working. If the people aren’t there, then they aren’t. It’s OK. Focus on other social components of a marketing plan, including Twitter, LinkedIn groups, or any other social site where you can easily connect with your customers.

Have a blog? Want to blog? Leave a comment with questions or answers about making it work!

Image: Librarianguish via Flickr

It’s not just for private companies

Weighted toward the private side? OK, yes, it is, in that in my examples I talked about selling products and services to customers. I wrote most of it not long after the great discussions I had with some vendors at Techno Security about content and social strategies.

But I used some law enforcement-specific examples too, especially with regard to victims of high-tech crimes, because ultimately, everyone is “selling” – they’re working to earn trust. Just as companies want to earn customers’ trust that their products will solve the problems they’re built to solve, law enforcement task forces want to earn citizens’ trust that their investigations will solve community problems.

Building on examiners’ content

The more digital forensics catches on, the more examiners from both public and private sectors seem to appear on blogs and in forums, hoping to learn from as well as educate each other. The community is perhaps one of the strongest on the Internet… yet it’s all about the individuals. Their agencies and companies hardly join in.

It does say something that these professionals are allowed to blog, podcast, tweet and join websites like LinkedIn, identifying themselves as employees of a particular company (though law enforcement agencies are less amenable to this). But what if their organizations tapped into their content?

Educating other examiners is, of course, different from educating members of the public, or less technically inclined employees. For an organization to point to its employees as proof of their collective expertise may not backfire, but it would be hard for the general public to understand the relevance to themselves.

Still, to link to a body of professionals all contributing research and opinion to the community would indicate at the very least an organization that hires original thinkers who care about cybercrime investigations. It would make those individuals more accessible to bloggers and journalists who could assist with public education. And it would signal to the investigative community that the organization values its employees.

How might your employees’ content improve your citizens’ or customers’ view of how you serve them?

What can you accomplish as part of your community?

Eric Huber’s post about Guidance vs. AccessData touched a nerve (as you’ll see from the comments I left there). Over the last 18 months of business-building, I’ve read many a blog from marketing/public relations/social media people who all say the same basic things:

• If you want loyal customers who consistently buy your products and services, build relationships with them.
• Connect those customers to one another via your products and services.
• Your relationships with them, and theirs with each other, constitute a community.
• Be part of that community, not outside it or over it.

These are the values that create loyalty over the long term. They are part of an organization’s culture. And I worry that too many digital forensic solutions providers, at least the “big guns,” are not part of the community they serve. They’re too focused on competing with one another.

Community vs. competition

It’s not just what I’ve heard and read that leads me to say this. It’s the almost complete lack of presence on social networking sites. There are exceptions — the SANS Institute and AccessData, both of which  put out valuable information as well as engage customers — but most everyone else? Might have a presence via blog or Twitter or LinkedIn, but only rarely update.

Which is a shame, because they’re missing out on a phenomenal little community. A community of developers and examiners, investigators and problem-solvers, many of whom blog or podcast their thoughts and expertise. What if forensic brands regularly joined these daily conversations?

I suspect one or more of several reasons why they don’t:

• They’re afraid of getting too cozy, of the chance that an off-the-cuff comment might betray an important secret.
• Their PR staff running the social networking show aren’t privy to enough of what’s going on in the company.
• Their PR staff know plenty about what’s going on in the company, but not enough of what’s going on in the industry to be able to talk about it.
• They’re afraid the competition will go after customers with whom they actively engage online.

There are probably at least a few more reasons. But the upshot is, even if they are monitoring the blogs and podcasts, they are still too busy looking sideways to focus on things the community wants and asks for beyond product-specific features. Of such needs and desires is innovation born, and companies too focused on remaining the leader of the pack can never rock their customers’ world by breaking free and doing something truly special.

Sure, they might offer intriguing and even ground-breaking information in conference labs or lectures… but those only reach the people who are there. And you can’t earn loyalty by taking business cards and putting the email addresses you find there on an email list that spits out the same content. Loyalty comes after customers recognize that you’re trying to make their lives better: easier, faster, more efficient.

Community-building as business strategy

So whether it’s great content that teaches, great products that help them do their jobs, great customer service that solves their problems, or (best of all) some combination of the three, good value-adding, community-building strategy has got to be part of more forensic vendors’ offerings. You’re not helping digital investigations by keeping your cards close to your chest, and you may even be making them harder.

All the while, you’re leaving a gaping wide opening for community members who do understand each other’s needs to come along and take what you’ve been taking for granted all along: customer loyalty.

Because at that point it won’t be about the products anymore. It will be about all the intangibles that go with them: the things you can never compete with because your C-suite isn’t willing to share enough of its passion, values, personality, the things that drove the company into the digital investigations industry to begin with.

What can you do today to become more fully a part of the investigative community?

Image: diamondmountain via Flickr

Don't let your email end up spam

Sharon Nelson’s recent blog post caught my eye, because while I read a lot of blogs about digital forensics, and I also read a lot of blogs about marketing, it’s rare to find anything about marketing for digital forensics.

This is likely because, as Sharon herself points out:

My conclusion, overall, is that small and midsize computer forensics companies are still struggling with moving from the paper world to the electronic world. And no one seems entirely sure what works best and where the greatest ROI is.

So while she doesn’t focus on marketing in her e-discovery blog, the mention is worth discussing, as is her topic: list-buying.

Buying vs. growing customer lists

I make no bones about being brand-new to marketing. I know content really well, but I’m still working out the nuances of attracting customers and building loyalty and so on. The general understanding I had about list-buying – the practice of buying targeted customer lists through which to market products and services – was that it’s a big no-no.

I emailed Sharon:

Your mention of podcasts are good, but I’m not so sure about list purchasing. I tend to think firms should be growing their lists organically, at least in part by lead generation activities like free webinars and even local presentations to law enforcement, attorneys and businesses.

Local media relations can help, as can publishing presentations to SlideShare and YouTube. It does all of course depend on company goals and capabilities, but some mix of all of the above is probably not as difficult as company owners might fear.

She responded:

I should have said (doggone it) that firms should grow their organic lists even if they were going to experiment with the purchase of lists. I have heard that list purchases result in better organic lists as folks sign up for white papers, webinars, newsletters, etc.

My experiences with opt-in and opt-out

My experience as a prospect, and the general school of thought on the subject, is of landing on a company’s email list following a webinar I attend or white paper I download. Signing up often involves implicit or explicit opting-in to the list, so that following the webinar or download, one of a few things happens:

• I get more invitations to other webinars or downloads.
• I’m asked to buy products or services, such as an e-course.
• I’m invited to a software demo.

My favorites (no really; no sarcasm) are the newsletters that feature a mix of content, including free articles together with ones I have an option to buy. I like these because it takes the pressure off; I don’t feel I’m being sold to, as I do with software demo offers. This process is called “lead nurturing,” and it’s intended to provide valuable content until the prospect is ready to buy a product or service.

These methods, of course, take a lot of time and work – perhaps more than a smaller digital forensics firm is willing to put in, without a dedicated content marketing or public relations person. List-buying makes a certain amount of sense because it effectively allows you to “jumpstart” the process, rather than devote months to content-building and promotion thereof.

At the same time, however, and as Sharon’s response implies, it’s important to have something of value ready to go to back up your emailing. This is especially true because marketers do point out how sensitive more consumers are becoming to how their names end up on lists. The few times I have been solicited without permission (implicit or explicit), I’ve ignored/deleted — and if the email is really obnoxious (and isn’t already in my spam filter), marked as spam.

If you do choose to buy a list, make sure opt-out language exists somewhere on the email. Far preferable, though, is to allow customers to opt in, the “organic” growth Sharon and I discussed. Either way, though, content you provide in the email and on your website needs to be able to back up whatever claims your email makes. Otherwise you risk ending up in the spam filter, and whether you grew lists or bought them, the money you spent will be out the window.

What kind of content would build list loyalty among your prospects and customers?

Image: arnold | inuyaki via Flickr

Honesty builds toward the reputation you want

“Reputation management” is a concept that makes sense for organizations trying to maintain their brands. Whether they have a strong online presence or not, companies’ and agencies’ reputations are made or broken on the actions of managers or employees, products or services, tragedy or the everyday.

When it comes to individuals, however, “reputation management” starts to sound a bit shady. Reputation and character, after all, are two separate things. If you are managing the thing everyone sees, that implies the underlying character itself must be managed.

Of course, an organization has much less control over its reputation than an individual does over his or hers. An individual, at that point, shouldn’t need to manage anything; it should be second nature.

Second nature online

The problem with online reputation management isn’t the reputation or the person behind it; frequently, it’s the tools. People to whom blogging, tweeting, or status-updating does not come easily find themselves at a disadvantage: people who do it daily may get, and offer, more attention. Which might even translate into more business.

Making reputation management second nature involves making choices, and I don’t mean hiring a company like ReputationDefender or committing social media suicide. (You could, I suppose. But because social media amplify rather than create, consider whether you have an offline reputation you need to work on first.)

As I said on CyberSpeak, reputation management for an individual means honesty. This can take one of a few forms:

Honesty about stupid decisions

So your Facebook account shows incriminating evidence of—well, more than girls gone wild. This post (and accompanying comments) at Shel Holtz’ blog shows how conflicted many people are about whether employers and others have any right to make hiring decisions based on what they see on Facebook.

Note that it’s not about the behavior itself. As many pointed out, partying happens anyway. That it’s now both more documented and more accessible is the issue. Some believe that just because it’s documented doesn’t mean people should be fired or removed from consideration.

Others think if prospective employees are dumb enough to post it publicly, what other poor judgment will they display? (Think about this in terms of information security.)

Best of all: the employee or prospect who comes clean about going wild. No, it won’t guarantee job security. Only the employer can say that. But there is no better way to build character and reputation simultaneously than to own mistakes made. If you do lose a job? Then it’s an opportunity to move and continue to grow.

Honesty about what you know and what you don’t

Reputation for individuals is frequently about knowledge. Whether boss or expert, the person who can admit they don’t know something—and ask for enlightenment from the best qualified person to provide it—wins more respect than the person who tries to hide their insecurity by blaming, posturing, or anything else that makes it painfully obvious they don’t know.

Again, it’s about ownership. And, as with mistake-making, courage to learn. That can be much more difficult when you are in a leadership position. It involves giving up a certain amount of control, making yourself vulnerable to possibly less noble-minded people in your organization or outside of it. Worst of all: if this happens during a crisis.

There are many complicated variables in play here. Making yourself vulnerable through honesty means trusting your team, sometimes the public. What if you can’t trust your team? Well… sometimes that’s about them, but other times it’s about you.

The balance really lies in desire for personal growth vs. job security… but keep in mind, job security is very often flimsier than you think. Posturing and honesty may both get you to the same place, but if you’re fired for being honest, at least you can build your reputation on a positive quality rather than a negative.

Honesty about what you can and can’t manage

It doesn’t make sense to run out and get an account on every social network imaginable, because of the hundreds that exist. Even those of us with fewer than half a dozen accounts have trouble “scaling,” or adjusting the ratio of social networking to our regular work.

You might admire the way other professionals blog their thoughts three times a week, but if you only want to blog because you think you “should,” think about your real reasons. Are you afraid they’re getting business you want? That they appear to know more than you do? Blogging may not be for you. Think, instead, about Facebook pages—they frequently take less work to maintain—or networking via LinkedIn groups or even Twitter.

If, however, you have something to say about a topic no one else is covering, then blogging (or its siblings podcasting and vlogging) is something to consider. And, because it allows for a depth of thought not enabled by quick-fix status update services, it’s a good way to give others a feel for how you think and seek to be perceived in public.

Starting fresh

Trying to wipe out your checkered past is too obvious. As shown in the comments about this judge, attempts just tarnish one’s reputation further.

It would be refreshing to see the dishonest own their troubles rather than try to cover them up or destroy them outright. And I do mean own, not make public apologies no one will take seriously.

The truly repentant act it. That means forming new habits, challenging yourself to push past the more convenient ways of doing things. Unless you’re a sociopath, that kind of challenge can only give you the reputation you so desire.

Image: OliBac via Flickr

• Why an online resume is not the same thing as a traditional C.V.
• Why it’s not just about not posting some things, and how online users might “fill the hole” with better content
• The importance of goal-setting and strategizing how to use various social sites
• The need for better guidance for young professionals online
• Having consistent professional values online as well as off

After you’ve listened, please come back and tell me what you think!

He wanted to continue building his brand as an expert in his field, which he had started while still in law enforcement. Trouble was, the company he now worked for didn’t want him to do that—despite his considerable reputation. What if he left? they thought. He’d take it all with him.

Well guess what? The company’s lack of foresight pushed him further and further out the door as it focused on sales rather than trust. When a competitor who believes in harnessing that reputation scoops him up, that company will come out ahead.

An asset, not a threat

Organizations often view individuals’ “brands,” or the qualities that make them personally and professionally outstanding, as a threat. This is understandable in industries like digital forensics, where software code and other proprietary information is closely guarded. A nondisclosure clause in a contract can only be enforced after the damage is done.

But many organizations view professional brands as a threat to the organizational structure itself. For instance, a law enforcement agency, as a paramilitary organization, traditionally requires its officers to put aside their own identities for the sake of becoming part of a unified whole. Hence the uniform, the emphasis on standards and protocols, the information stream that comes from just one source. The officer who does his or her own thing detracts from the agency’s unified image and mission.

Connecting all individuals

This is true of all employers, to some extent. And some individuals are fine with being absorbed into a larger whole. Others, however, aren’t. Truly successful organizations recognize that there’s a place for both kinds of employees, and create an environment where they can both thrive.

Allowing those with their own ambitions and visions to have a chance to pursue them is all the more important as social media grows in popularity, not just among people who want to stay in touch with far-flung family and friends, but also among professionals who want to network with one another.

That’s because jobs nowadays are all about information rather than assembly-line process; they’re increasingly complex, especially in fields like digital forensics. The more information professionals can share with each other, the better for the industry as a whole.

What about those information leaks?

Actually, it’s already happening. Competitors in the digital forensics space are always acquiring, then reverse engineering, each other’s software. And it’s not always because of employees jumping ship. Sometimes it’s friends of friends who share the software.

And when the wrong kind of information is posted to social networking sites, it’s not always a failure of employees. Sure, there’s the code of conduct. But many people don’t understand social media’s ripple effect, the fact that what they say is viewable by a much wider audience than ever before. That’s a failure of the organization to help them understand—to provide adequate training on goal-setting and use for the various sites.

Team-building via individual-building

So rather than tamp down on employees and their intellectual assets, organizations may want to follow Arik Hanson’s advice: “But, talent’s going to come and go anyway. Why not take the best advantage of that talent while it’s in-house by encouraging and rewarding personal branding activities?”

Not only does a personal blog draw on the blogger’s own network rather than the organization’s, Hanson continues, but it also allows for connections to be made on a much more personal level. This is the difference between an official interview between detective and witness, and the story of trauma told over coffee to a caring acquaintance.

Furthermore, writes Jason Lauritsen, social media renders organizations no longer fully in control of their own brands: “Employer brand management has become a dynamic, full-contact sport that has broad implications for organizations. Embracing that the brand belongs to the people raises some sticky questions for human resources teams.”

Ultimately, the company or agency that trusts its employees to be responsible is the one that will experience less trouble from data breaches or code of conduct violations. It certainly has the right and the responsibility to set goals and expectations for employees, but even this is easier—and cheaper—than dealing with employee attrition and hiring, rules violations, and so forth.

It also strengthens the organization as a whole. Think about professional sports. Teams know they would be nothing without their individual players—the superstars as well as the less talented but still necessary positions. And when you’re a fan, it’s easier to get behind a team when you feel you know (and can respect) the players.

If you’re an employee, how can you convince your employer to take advantage of your professional brand?

If you’re an employer, what can you do to promote employees as individual parts of your team?

Image: Photomish Dan via Flickr

I’ve heard this before, just never seen it on the front bumper of a public vehicle. But I want to discuss it in light of how I’m building my business.

Personal branding?

In my blogroll is Dan Schawbel’s Personal Branding Blog, a blog I read regularly because it does have good career advice for young people in particular. But I have never been fond of the term “personal branding.” Dan himself theorized why people feel this way: “Could another term downplay the marketing connotation that risks reducing human beings to commodities?”

His answer to that particular concern:

Human beings start off as commodities and by way of personal branding, they can stand for something, achieve greatness and become visible to their audience.

He’s got a point about humans starting as commodities. People young and old do need to learn how to stand out from the rest of the labor force.

Still: branding? Do we have to put people on a par with Pepsi or J. Crew? Kami Huyse writes an even better explanation for those of us uncomfortable with the term: “…it leads to an undue focus on the self rather than developing and communicating character.”

Character as part of a team

Implicitly, what this means is that “personal branding” doesn’t do enough to support “team branding.” When you’re focused on reputation—what you do when others are watching—you’re not working with those others. You’re not part of a unit. You’re doing what you think is the right thing without considering whether it really is the right thing, whether it works for the team. You’re doing the right thing for you.

This is a crucial point when dealing with law enforcement and allied professions like digital forensics. Many of these professionals have the kind of character that deflects individual praise. They’d rather support team efforts. That’s because they know they wouldn’t be where they are without strong community support.

And yet they have great ideas, great talent, which deserves to be noticed so that they can help the wider community. Sometimes professionals know this; they want to go beyond where they’re already known, from law enforcement to the private sector, or focused on a new aspect of their careers.

Others are content just to help their team members and friends via training, doing favors, and such. They wouldn’t mind putting their expertise out there for more to see. It just isn’t a high priority. And that’s character.

Thus, good reputations. Even at times when they thought no one would be watching, someone was. They went the extra mile for a colleague or client, thinking it would stay just between them. And maybe it did. Except that even when loyal friends and fans don’t talk, people pay attention to loyalty.

Promote the mission

Writes Kami Huyse, “A better model is for the company (or individual) to develop strong values that they can live into and put all of their focus on that.” Values are related to missions. The best “personal brands” are those who have missions like, “Find the bad guys and put them in jail.”

Because when there’s a solid mission, and a person who’s devoted to it, they will do whatever they need to to make it happen. They’re not thinking a whit about what’s in it for them. They’re thinking about what they can do to strengthen the team to move as a cohesive goal toward completing the mission.

Professionals don’t just need to be scared into realizing that the Internet is as wide and as public as Times Square. They also need to be inspired to make that square their own digital billboard. Yes, this will be uncomfortable. No one likes to self-promote. Promoting the mission, though, is a whole different story.

What mission can you promote in the online square?

Image: striatic via Flickr