Cutting Through the Vision Clutter: Ready, Aim, Fire!

(My son experiencing a bit of Vision Clutter.)

Have you ever found yourself struggling to remember why you got into the work you're doing? Does it seem like your once-lofty goals are hopelessly out of reach? Are you working harder than ever without the results to show for it? Have you found yourself blaming the economy each time you put together a report?

If this sounds familiar, you have Vision Clutter. The good news is that it's treatable with a review period I call "Ready, Aim, Fire!" It is a valuable exercise when things seem bogged down and hopeless. Too many organizations mistake "effort" with "progress." Just because you're moving doesn't mean you're heading in the right direction! Hall of Fame basketball coach John Wooden said it best: "Don't mistake activity for achievement."

First, focus on the WHY of your organization. Strip it back down to the core. What is the fuel that drives your work? You joined your organization to make a real difference, right? Remind yourself, clearly, why you have stepped up to answer this call.

Second, focus on HOW your organization is branded and structured. Remember that your Brand is a promise! People expect specific things when interacting with your organization and it needs to be simple, consistent and approachable. Is everyone on your staff in the right role? Do they have things on their plate that should be someone else's responsibility? What about your volunteers - do they have a choice in how they represent your brand? A common problem with turning to "volunteer power" is turning power over to the volunteers. If you allow your brand to be represented poorly through their actions (however good the intentions may be), you will confuse and lose the support of potential supporters. If you have a clear branding process, your volunteers will become the lifeblood of your organization. Invest in a branding expert that will give you the right framework so you can tap into volunteer communities properly. It will make all the difference!

Third, focus on WHAT tools or technology you need to help your organization move in the right direction. There are thousands of low-cost tools (many are free) you can employ to improve communications, social media outreach, internal processes and more. Do your research  and don't rely on one person's pet technology just because they're comfortable with it.

One of my former business ventures was selling products online. We discovered that simply updating the product catalog was eating up too much time for our team, so we found a better system that automated the process. It freed our team to focus on B2B selling and we doubled our profits before the year was out. Basically, the status quo was slowly dragging us down; by locating the choke point it made all the difference.

People engage with your charity because you give them the tools and encouragement to step into a role they strongly identify with and enjoy. If they are attracted to your WHY (the reason you exist), and you provide them a clear HOW (branding) as well as a strong WHAT (tools, processes), they will help take you to greater heights.

This process should be repeated even when things seem like they're going well. By the time you recognize the symptoms of Vision Clutter, you will have much more work to do!

Extreme Positivity Works

It's not easy to stay positive all the time, but having a general rule of thumb to choose happiness will snowball into a more peaceful state of mind. I've been doing it through the face of several recent challenges, and it really works.

I'm calling this philosophy "Extreme Positivity." Even though it has shades of those cheesy motivational posters, I'm beginning to see the point. [I will still make fun of the motivational posters, but am sold on the concept.]



Since Surfperch deals in the shifting sands of technology, commerce and communication, I hope that many of the tasks that can drag us down ARE automated soon. To that end, we've been developing our own platform to maintain all 3 areas much easier.

For 2010, I will choose to be happy. It's sort of a "Defiant Joy" -- focusing on all the many, many blessings God has bestowed upon us all, none more so than yours truly. I'm going to find and choose words to sum up the best feeling of the week and rotate them here. It will be my own definition, paraphrased from Webster, of course.

January 1-7:

JOY: Not the same as the state of happiness, which is the often fleeting EFFECT from a source or stimuli; JOY is the deep source from which happiness comes and cannot be removed, regardless of circumstance or tragedy. I find true Joy in God, His blessings on our life; my fantastic family -- specifically my lovely wife and all her many incredible traits. Our kids are a major delight, as well. I also find Joy in my work, because I'm building something with my hands and mind, it's a challenge (to say the least), it's exciting and it pays all the bills (just barely).

Everything is Amazing and Nobody is Happy

Great viral video making its 3rd or 4th go-round the Internet circles: Louis CK's appearance on Conan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk

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KEEP YOUR VOICE WHILE GHOST WRITING

Being a ghost writer is strange.  I've been writing content for other people/companies for so long that I feel like my own voice has been transplanted.  Kind of like splicing fruit trees together and coming up with a very bizarre taste that is *kind of* like your own, but certainly not.  It's biting into an apple and tasting orange.

If you ever decide to come along and do this kind of work, you should be ready to stand up for your own thoughts, even while you're helping someone craft a better message.  Don't compromise your beliefs and your clients will appreciate you more for it.  A lesson I'm still learning too.

Congratulations to My Dad

My Dad is a Publisher of Christian books (both fiction and non-fiction).  Then he decided he would have a go at writing his own fiction novel and shopping it to competing publishers.

Not only did he land a contract and finish his novel, but it's going to debut in all U.S. Barnes & Noble Stores starting in March.  He's going to sell a million copies!  I'm really proud of him sticking to it.

We built him a website at www.missionarynovel.com.  We partner with a small company here in Portland called SliceFire for some of our videos, and they did the one on the front of the MissionaryNovel.com website.

We're trying to get better at video production too.  My two latest attempts are:

• Assist International S.H.A.R.E.S. Card
• DEEPcart -- Sad Tale of Abandoned Shopping Carts

Stay tuned.  I hope my Dad takes us all on a long, tropical vacation after his appearance on Larry King.

Announcing DEEPcart, in beta

We have been working for 8 months on a new platform for our enterprise partners. We call it DEEP, which stands for Dynamic E-commerce Exchange Platform. That's tech-speak for "Great E-commerce + Features You Need." (We elected not to call it GEFYN.)

It's based on the wildly popular Magento platform (an open-source solution that has the web developer community drooling), but DEEP has some key additions that are all our own. We are finishing the website (www.deepcart.com) and putting some of our preferred clients on the new platform to see how it behaves. So far, it's incredible and we're delighted with the performance.

More on this soon... I'm busy just getting clients on the new platform. If you want to see a demo of the cart, email me at chris@surfperch.com and I'll give you access to the beta site.

Thanks.

Chris Carmichael

What in the World is Google Doing?

A good friend of mine who works at Google gave me a heads up last month when he emailed me this (from his personal account): "bruce clay is almost onto something."

The name barely rang a bell among the 50 or so RSS feeds that I sift through each week on web search. (I should really cull that list down to ten.) When I looked up Bruce Clay, I realized that my Google pal was referring to a long-awaited paradigm shift in how Google serves up pages.

In a nutshell, this paradigm shift is supposed to have this effect:

1. Gradually but surely switch to something called Behavior Based Search.

2. Push out the pure e-tailers working from their parents' basement and drop-shipping product in their underwear.

3. Give hope and results to the long-suffering retailer.

4. Mean death to search engine manipulation of any kind.

5. Force those who have unfairly enjoyed high rankings to pay to keep their sites on the first page.

6. Reward high-quality sites that play by Google's rules.

Most Internet professionals know that Google has been planning a shift in its search engine's behavior for 2009, but maybe we aren't aware of how drastic this may be. It looks like traditional retail stores may be the big winners here as they re-calibrate the way people find sites through their pages....including tilting search results to include local companies first.

I'll dig into it in depth and corner my pal in Mt View to provide more concrete examples besides lame posts like this one. You can see what I'm getting at by searching "Intent based search" and "behavior based search" and "seo is dead" and "search wiki."

For the record, I don't think SEO is dead, but it will be radically different and I'm glad to see it. It will improve Google's product tremendously, which is why they're doing it, of course.

--chris

PR is a marathon, not a sprint

Who is saying what about your company? If you want to control the "buzz" surrounding your site, you should be prepared to create and maintain a diligent PR strategy.

Good P.R. isn't an accident -- companies with targeted campaigns do better than those without. SurfPerch's strategy has always involves traditional media releases (such as writing articles issued through PR Newswire or other such services), as well as targeted "viral" campaigns and new media techniques. How do we do that?

We offer a few tricks up our sleeves. First, you should get a sense of the publications that operate in your associated industry. For that, do some searches through Google to get a list of at least 4 or 5 publications. Second, you should develop contacts at those publications and offer to write objective articles about your industry. Third, you can hire SurfPerch to ghost-write those articles and any follow-up press releases (it's what we do).

Editors of these publications LOVE to have contacts inside their industry -- and love when they offer to write articles about upcoming trends in the industry. They can't be expected to know everything about the industries, even if that's their stated objective. They rely on insiders to provide the latest and greatest from inside the boardrooms and tech stations. Become their eyes and ears and you may just learn how to focus an article to help quietly promote the trends you are capitalizing upon.

The real trick is to closely track when the article is going to be released -- and then writing a press release that is not so objective and highlights how your company is working on the very trend you described in the article.

SurfPerch's skills and experience with writing and editing give us the tools to help you with a variety of writing/editing challenges. These include:

Writing and/or Editing Copy for your Website

Writing/Editing Business Plans and Proposals

Writing/Editing a Grant Proposal

Issuing Press Releases

Crafting a Brochure

Regardless of the specific need, we can help you streamline your company's overall PR strategy. It's simple: keep your company name in print. We can show you how. If you are interested in learning more about this emerging trend in website strategy, please contact us through our website or email me at chris [at] surfperch.com.

--Chris Carmichael