In the war to win your customers’ attention, you are not competing against other marketers; you are competing with your customers’ friends’ Facebook walls. On September 17, 2009, Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, co-authors of Trust Agents, talked to us about how to win attention in a world of information overload.

It’s all about building trust with people so that they will listen when you have something to say. Brogan and Smith provided helpful tips from their own experience for breaking through the white noise of everyday life and getting attention.

1. Make a Habit out of Breaking Habits.

When you interrupt the patterns that govern people’s lives by saying and doing the unexpected in a manner that is helpful or insightful to others, you wake them up, you jolt them out of their mental auto-pilot mode, and you become visible.

With social media, you have the opportunity to become visible through many channels and to be seen as a whole person rather than a flat corporate entity. Brogan and Smith encourage companies to put a face to their marketing. Also, when you have a habit of breaking habits, you become more creative and more open to new ideas, which in turn fuels your ability to develop new angles and opportunities for yourself.

2. Stand Out, Start Something.

If you’re competing against others, you’ve already lost, say Brogan and Smith. Citing Cirque du Soleil and the iPhone as examples of game changers in their respective industries, they noted the importance of carving out more profitable spaces in which your company can operate.

For instance, PodCamp, a Barcamp-style “unconference” for new media enthusiasts and professionals co-founded by Brogan and Christopher Penn in 2006, was a way of standing out and starting something. By creating a community around a shared passion, they created the Next Big Thing without quite realizing it. That flood of attention and enthusiasm benefited them even as it created momentum for everyone involved.

“The only difference between a community and an audience is which way you point the chairs.”
—Chris Brogan

Chris Brogan on the evolution of PodCamp (interview with Adele McAlear)

(Toward the end of the presentation, an audience member amended this advice as “listen and then start something.” Don’t forget to check out what’s already going on and start participating before starting something new. Perhaps your Next Big Thing has already begun and is waiting for you to join.)

3. Build Your Network Ahead of Need.

Just as the worst time to find a job is right after you’ve lost one, the worst time to find a customer is right when you need one. If you have built relationships with people before you need the sale, it’s that much easier to get them to be receptive to your offer.

4. Create a Culture of Giving.

Chris Brogan describes his call-to-action as “Come back—I’ll give you more.” He says that by creating a culture in which he makes a habit of doing things to help people, he’s “training people to be nice” to him. Indeed, by setting the example of giving value to people without asking for something in return, you train others to pay it forward in a similar fashion. It’s no wonder that eventually you would become the beneficiary of that goodwill. As with collaborative efforts like PodCamp, generosity and inclusion build conversation and engagement, which is a recipe for trust and attention.

And speaking of recipes…

5. Give your customers recipes in which you are the ingredient.

You won’t find a can of cream of mushroom soup that doesn’t have a recipe on the label that requires cream of mushroom soup. Likewise, you should frame yourself as a necessary ingredient in your customers’ success. I found this piece of advice to be one of the most concrete of the presentation, and one that many of us could run with, when we decide how it applies to us.

What would a recipe for your business look like? If you sell widgets, could you suggest projects on your Web site that use that widget? If you sell expertise, could you create an event around that area of knowledge? AMA members, write in with your ideas and get some collaboration going!

With these newsletters and other publications, companies today have a tremendous opportunity to position themselves for long-term growth by building a community of prospects, customers and business partners at a modest cost. But it isn’t easy.

The Internet has been flooded with information, much of it useless sales speak. Prospects and customers receive hundreds, if not thousands, of emails a day. Breaking through the noise requires a unique delivery mechanism.

The first requirement is that the publication be developed as an indispensable read. Unfortunately, this concept flies in the face of the typical corporate newsletter, which typically contains press releases and sales pitches. These days, such newsletters will be deleted on sight.

To become a must read, corporate publications will either contain important information or analysis that the reader cannot get anywhere else, or will aggregate a narrow slice of information that’s being reported elsewhere.

An example of the former is a monthly newsletter produced by Austin-based Troux Technologies Inc. called Architecture & Governance. The publication provides leadership articles in a narrow area — enterprise architecture and IT governance.
It’s doubtful that those interested in this field could get as much analysis in a single quarterly publication as they find in A&G. After quantifying its success, Troux is about to enter its fifth year of publishing the newsletter.

Another example of a corporate publication that Charles Schwab Inc. sends to clients and prospects is Trader Digest. This newsletter is published as a monthly e-newsletter and a quarterly print publication. Both feature original content, as well as some relevant content that has been published elsewhere. The editorial staff includes brief summaries of relevant industry articles, which include links to the full articles on the Internet.

To get the most out of a publication, a marketing team should be fully engaged with the managing editor. This especially comes into play with the aforementioned relevant articles about the industry.

A close relationship between the company and its managing editor can also heighten the effectiveness of a corporate publication in other ways. For example, if a company is maintaining a successful public relations campaign, the fruits of that labor — articles written by journalists — can be included in an industry news section, or even reprinted in part, thereby broadcasting the article to the readership.

Similarly, the managing editor of such a publication should work closely with the company’s business development professional to facilitate the trading of content between newsletters. The company would benefit from its content appearing in the newsletter of a partner company.

Working closely with business development also offers other benefits in that the company can hold the publishing of a story as a benefit for the partner company, and receive something in return.

Two key questions should be addressed before embarking on such a project. First, does the company want to blatantly brand the newsletter as being published by the company? The simple answer is typically yes if the company is in a mature or crowded industry. The answer is no if the company is pioneering a niche, such as what Troux is doing in the enterprise architecture space. The company need not be deceptive with this, but should be subtle.

Second, does the company have a professional in house who can oversee such a successful publication? The answer may be yes if the company has a marketing person with journalism experience and plenty of bandwidth. Companies should be leery of turning over such an assignment to a typical public relations firm as such publication management typically falls outside their wheelhouse.

In short, a company that wants to publish such a newsletter should look for:

• Creative editorial development.
• Professional writing skills.
• Managing editor experience.
• Publishing background.
• Graphics and design capabilities.
• Proofing capabilities.
• Printing sources.
• Distribution and fulfillment capabilities.
• Project management focus.

Newsletters and magazines remain a fertile ground for establishing rapport with customers and prospects. But publishing a newsletter that offers little benefit to that audience is a costly exercise that’s best avoided. Unlike many other marketing tools that leverage the Internet, companies that choose this route are best off producing a quality must-read publication, or none at all.

Holt Hackney has been managing and writing newsletters for 15 years. He can be reached at (512) 478-8858 or hhackney@hackneycommunications.com.