Social Media and Word-of-Eye Marketing

We tend to prattle on about the marketing power of social media, but Anne Reuss is living proof that it’s the great equalizer.

Anne is deaf and a champion of social media. She’s got an amazing passion which quickly shines through in her series of YouTube videos -- where she shares her views about content curation, Pinterest, the accessibility of social media and more. As you’d guess, she’s got a unique perspective: social media has once again connected her to marketing and the world, and her voice is as loud and clear as anyone else. Rather than word-of-mouth marketing, she’s benefiting from “word of hand” or even “word-of-eye” marketing . . . billions of eyeballs trained on computers and phones.

Let Anne tell you in her own words  – it’s less than two minutes long and worth every second:



The way we learned about Anne is pretty cool, too: her video appeared in a recent blog post by Mark Schaefer, a social media marketing consultant. Peter, our lead developer on SocialEars, was scanning SocialEars this week (he’s a confessed addict) and discovered Anne’s video. And now we’re sharing it with you.

I love how Anne describes social media as her form of background noise, in the same way we flip on a TV or a radio to stay connected while working or doing chores. When we talk about noise at HRmarketer, it’s usually in the context of helping companies get noticed in this crazy world of online noise. Yes, there’s an unlimited world of information is at our fingertips but it can be incredibly deafening. With so much online chatter, sometimes you can’t hear anything at all. 

If you’re a marketer trying to research the favorite story topics of a journalist / analyst / social voice, or determine what topics are trending (and the people and stories influencing those topics) -- or simply get connected -- it’s hard to know where to start.......

That’s why we created SocialEars. I think Anne would enjoy the irony.

Posted by Elrond Lawrence, VP of media relations for HRmarketer.

Fifteen Minutes of [online] Influence

I'm willing to bet that the word “influencer” has been used more often during the last few years than at any point in human history.

Everyone is creating influencer lists these days. Top 25 here, Top 100 there . . . someone has probably published a top 10 list of top influencer lists! And the software to identify influencers is endless: Klout, PeerIndex, Kred, plus many more. While these lists are certainly great visibility tools for the publishers who create them, their value to marketing and PR professionals is questionable and most certainly overblown.

For starters, many of these lists are out of date soon after they appear. As John Sumser (who not only ranks on top influencer lists but publishes his own) says, "the Internet is the ultimate ‘what have you done for me lately’ media form."   

These lists oversimplify the landscape. Many marketers who plan online social campaigns mistakenly assume that they only need to focus on people who make these top lists. As a result, they miss opportunities by ignoring others who may actually care more about their information, and who are more likely to engage with them. Let’s face it -- the dance cards of most top influencers are full. 

As an example, I did a little experiment. Using HRmarketer's information databases that include thousands of journalists and social voices in the HR and related sectors, I created two separate lists of:

(1) Journalists
(2) Social Voices (analysts, consultants, HR professionals, vendors and others who aren’t employed by a traditional media outlet)

Everyone on these lists "publishes" online content and information about a variety of human resource topics via blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. After I created these lists I used SocialEars to obtain each person's "influence" scores from services like Klout and Peerindex. I then averaged them all together to come up with one single "influence" score for each person. Then I combined the two lists and sorted from high to low based on these scores.

What I found was interesting.

Every single person in the top 20 was a Social Voice. Not a single journalist made the top 20. The list of these top 20 Social Voices was a mix of prominent HR speakers, CEOs, consultants, analysts, recruiters, entrepreneurs and HR practitioners.

I'm willing to bet these people are not on most vendors’ radar.

So the first takeaway from this little experiment is that media relations has changed big-time in our social world. You can no longer rely entirely on a traditional distribution list of journalists. This was the focus of a recent HRmarketer white paper titled: “Social Influence: Thriving in a New World of Media Relations” (download PDF). 

But be careful: this doesn’t mean you should ignore the journalists in your PR and social outreach! Although no journalist made the list, most writers and editors are constantly creating content for their publications -- some with big circulations -- and that content gets shared on social channels. Maybe Joe Journalist at Big Industry Trade magazine doesn't do social, but his content gets tweeted. So, yes, you still need to pursue traditional media opportunities, but that alone is not enough -- and that's the point. 

The next part of my experiment was to pick a few trending HR topics. I chose “cloud computing,” “phased retirement” and “workplace bullying.” Again, using SocialEars I generated a list of people who have been actively authoring and curating content on these topics -- as they relate to HR -- within the last few weeks.

What I found was, again, interesting.

Nearly everyone who made these list had not shown up on my earlier list of top HR influencers -- and most have never appeared on any other Top HR list that I've seen. Yet, virtually everyone on my list is an influencer – as defined by thousands of Twitter followers, LinkedIn networks of 250-plus and prolific authors and curators of HR content. 

Our takeaway? The definition of an “influencer” is always in flux, and the top names are always changing. Depending on the topic(s) you care about -- and when you care about them --, you can almost always discover new names (people not on your immediate radar) who may already be influencing specific topics and audiences. 

So instead of relying on one traditional (read: stale) media list, shake things up: build several small lists that focus on media, analysts, bloggers, HR practitioners, and online personalities at the time you want to share news. Think of each list as a work in progress and refresh them as often as you can.

Remember, influence is a moving target.

Post by HRmarketer / SocialEars Founder and CEO Mark Willaman. Join Mark on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Put a lens on the world for me

"Put a lens on it for me."

I sat across from him at the table, his team and mine along the periphery, waiting for him to expound on the statement.

He kept flipping back and forth in the proposal pages as if magical insight would jump forth and say, here I am -- buy me!

"Yes, that's what I need to see -- put a lens on this for me so I understand what to expect."

That was only a few weeks ago and has stuck with me ever sense. That's what any of us need in business, right? Give me a lens on "information" I'm interested in so I can make fact-based correlations, recommendations, decisions and predictions.

The ol' what's in it for me schtick. Really this time, in real-time. Because Googling, managing spreadsheets and guessing is so 2007.

Managing data is mind-bending. Even though the human brain can store vast amounts of information, our working memory can only recall up to 7 things at one time.

Easy peasy. But recalling vast amounts of data to make fact-based decisions?

Not gonna happen humanly (yet). Imagine the sheer volume along and you'll pass out. A petabyte of information is equal to one quadrillion bytes, or 1000 terabytes. My goodness that's a lot of information. Our minds have a hard enough fathoming a gig much less a handful of megabytes.

Or up to 7 items at once.

But today we can put a lenses on the vast amounts of data we deal with in business and again make fact-based correlations, recommendations, decisions and predictions. We have the storage space and the magic algorithms that make it all happen.

For example, Dovetail Software offers an HR case management system designed to carefully track, audit, automate and deliver analytics on employee complaints and grievances. The software puts a lens on the organization and helps to mitigate legal risks while giving employers insights into hidden and potentially dangerous employee relations trends and patterns.

Another example is Visier Workforce Analytics, a software system that integrates business and workforce data from all sources in an organization. It comes pre-built with "best practices" so companies can focus on making better decision immediately to impact their most important asset: their people. Today most high-performance companies use workforce analytics to measure and manage a wide range of things including recruiting, turnover and employee performance.

And you're not going to get away without again hearing about SocialEars again, our social listening software product. SocialEars is all about listening to the social conversations, discovering trending topics and the media outlets and people participating in and influencing those discussions, being able to read their shared and authored “content” and most importantly – joining in conversations and engaging the right people.

Today, social analytics software makes it possible to monitor, analyze and comprehend an increasingly complex marketplace and vast amounts of information while delivering more effective marketing and media relations insight -- in only hours, not months.

"Put a lens on the world for me, would you?"

Absolutely. We can do that now.

(In full disclosure, we're working with the two companies referenced above, which is a lens of another kind, don't you think?)

Why Big Data is a Big Deal for Marketers - and HR

Big Data is a big topic these days. Hype? We don't think so.

Nor does a recent Wall Street Journal article titled “So, What's Your Algorithm?”  

Consider this: a petabyte is equal to one quadrillion bytes, or 1000 terabytes. The banking industry alone stores over 600 petrabytes of information. Health care providers store over 400 petabytes. Professional services? Over 400 petrabytes.

Thanks to cloud computing we can now harvest and analyze massive amounts of information from multiple databases to make better business decisions - something not possible as recent as a few years ago. This is Big Data analytics and it’s about to change your world. Cloud computing makes it possible to handle big data and help us reduce human biases from our decision-making.

It means fewer hunches and more facts.

Take the Schwan Food Company. The WSJ article talks about how Schwan’s home delivery sales were listless for four straight years – until they started using data analytics. Now, they are sending more than 1.2 million dynamically-generated customer recommendations every day and matching seemingly disparate customers with similar purchase patterns in their past. Sales are rising.

The CEO of the data analytics firm they work with says, "A few years ago it might take a month to run a project involving 30 billion separate calculations. Today it can be done in two to three hours."

Another example in the WSJ article comes from the Rx industry: "Soon, a drug saleswoman will have real-time analytics that tell her to focus on the doctors who spent time on social networks that morning, and who are thus more apt to influence colleagues.”

The predictive power of Big Data is enormous -- and just beginning to be understood.  Consider this: researchers using data analytics found a spike in Google search requests for terms like “flu symptoms” and “flu treatments” weeks BEFORE there was an increase in flu patients coming to hospital emergency rooms in a particular region.

What about Big Data in the human capital space?

In his article “Get Your Head Out of the Clouds (and into Big Data)”  Jason Averbook states that most organizations utilize less than 5% of available data because the rest has been too costly to access or effectively utilize.  Jason writes that HR functions today have approximately 10,000% more data than they had only 3-5 years ago and that Big Data will give employers the tools and techniques to affordably exploit the other 95%.

This means better hiring decisions, better allocation of human capital, better talent management, better rewards and recognition, better compensation and benefits, better productivity – better everything that relates to the recruiting, retention, management and use of people.

HR thought leader John Sumser, who was recently named a top 20 Big Data influencer by Forbes  says this about Big Data and HR: "A universe of sensors will blow the lid off of HR as we know it."

OK – this is a marketing blog so let’s talk about what Big Data means for marketing and PR departments in the HR space. Big Data analysis is a lot more than just measuring your "social footprint" or monitoring who's talking about your brand.

To make the point, let's leave the clouds and get down into the weeds of media relations.

Too many in this profession assume they know who to reach out to with their latest pitches. They blast announcements the same way they did five years ago – to a tired, stale distribution list – or worse, they post it to a press release wire service and walk away. More savvy PR pros will share the news on their social channels and maybe send a few personal "pitches" to journalists, analysts and others. They typically aim at their same small universe of contacts. But these pleas for recognition are rarely targeted and often have little impact.

Until recently, there was no choice. Too much data and not enough time – or technology – to make much sense of it. Social media only compounds the problem.

Enter big data.


Noise to Signal Cartoon

Now, in near real-time, you can custom build targeted "lists" (which change daily) to include only those who share an interest and are influencing the topics or news you want to talk about. This includes many people you’ve likely never heard of before. And you can slice and dice the information in a variety of ways. Our SocialEars software is an example of a technology that allows this level of insight.  

But this is just a small sliver of how Big Data will help marketers. Similar to how it impacts HR management, it also impacts all aspects of marketing: Pricing, Promotion, Product and Place.

The implications for sales departments are equally huge. Imagine being able to monitor the online "social" activity of your prospects to see what they most frequently talk about, learn their product needs, or the events they plan on attending? Again, technologies like SocialEars make this possible.

This is Big Data and it’s a Big Deal for marketing and PR departments.

In his blog post, Jason Averbook wrote:

“OK, it’s official.  I’m calling it right now.  I am betting ‘Big Data’ will unseat ‘Cloud Computing’ as the top buzzword in 2012 that will get HR people talking. Any takers?” 

I'm a taker, Jason. And I'll make my own call (at least the first time publicly): I am betting “Big Data” will be the top buzzword in 2012 that gets marketing and PR people talking. Any takers?

By the way, if you’re interested in this topic (as it relates to marketing and PR), join the Social Listening Analytics Group at LinkedIn: 



Post by HRmarketer / SocialEars Founder and CEO Mark Willaman. Join Mark on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Showing Our Social Colors. Cool? Yes, But So What?

Since its BETA launch in November, SocialEars has created a lot of buzz in the HR marketplace.
Most people who see it say, "Wow, that is so cool!"

But then come questions like, "What's the business value?"

It reminds me of the World Wide Web in 1995 (check out PeopleSoft in 1996) when companies first started to introduce websites. Wow, that's cool! What's the business value? (Yes, people did ask.) Those that pioneered the Web were in prime shape when their audiences finally “got” it and climbed aboard en masse. The rest had to scramble to catch up.

For marketers and PR pros, social listening and analytics software is every bit as game-changing as the Web. Or, as I like to say, software that helps you listen, discover and engage. 

At its core, SocialEars, like many social listening software products, is about listening to the social conversations, discovering trending topics and the media outlets and people participating in and influencing those discussions, being able to read their shared and authored “content” and most importantly – joining in conversations and engaging the right people.

While talking with the CEO of a leading social recruiting firm, he echoed a line that we’ve repeated to our own clients: “media relations in the age of social media isn’t rocket science, but it takes time and effort to ensure you’re engaging the influencers that want to hear your story.”

How true! More than ever, companies need to:

1. Author a steady stream of original online content
2. Promote / share this content via their social properties
3. Share and comment on other thought leaders’ content, and 
4. Get thought leaders (we call them social voices) to share and comment on their content.

SocialEars Tag Cloud Shows What's Trending

As recently as five years ago, doing this effectively wasn't really possible. Sure, you could scan through online magazines and carry out “brute force” searches for topics, as well as the people who covered your products – but it was incredibly time-consuming. Then came social media and an overwhelming “fire hose” of information. Analyzing this big data was a challenge beyond most companies’ ability – unless they had the computing power of IBM’s Big Blue.

Now we have cloud computing, which finally makes it possible to handle big data but has created a new problem: noise. With millions of bytes of information being pumped through these fire hoses daily, making sense of it all has become a real challenge. Computing power and algorithms alone can't yet solve this problem. This is where people with industry-specific expertise are needed – as well as the ability to choose which data to analyze.

Social listening and analytics software makes all of this possible. Our SocialEars software is uniquely qualified to capture and present such information in the human capital marketplace because it sits on top of HRmarketer's information databases that focus on media outlets, press contacts, analysts, and social "voices" (consultants, HR professionals, vendors, and thought leaders) in the HR marketplace. And for each of these sources we track the "content" they author and/or share via their media outlets, social networks, Twitter accounts, LinkedIn, Facebook (coming in a few weeks) and blogs. All told, it's analyzing thousands of highly targeted fire hoses and millions of  pieces of data.  

Again, what’s the business value?

SocialEars: Listen - Discover - Engage

Let’s say you’re preparing campaigns to market a HR product launch. There’s no point in crafting the greatest press announcement on Earth if you send it to journalists who don’t cover your space. Or analysts. Or if you miss the HR blogger with 500 followers who have been dreaming of the very product you’re about to unveil. SocialEars allows you to quickly find the people that have an interest in your topic, gives you access to their recent authored or shared content and allows you to engage with them.
The value goes beyond marketing and PR. Market research firms and even HR professionals are finding SocialEars of value as they discover peers, solution providers and consultants with influence or expertise on particular subjects. Vendors are researching topics for white papers and webcasts at blazing speed. Many of our customers are revealing new ways to use this information each week.

Just this week we introduced some colorful new tag clouds that reveal whether or not a particular HR topic is trending up, down, or flat -- and related sparklines to show those trends over six-month time frames. We can do this with literally thousands of topics.

Here’s the bottom line: social analytics makes it possible to make sense of an increasingly complex marketplace and deliver more effective marketing and media relations. And you can navigate vast amounts of information in hours, as opposed to weeks or months.

Now that's really cool.

Post by HRmarketer / SocialEars Founder and CEO Mark Willaman. Join Mark on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Influencer Relations is still relationship building

Sure, you've done the messaging work as it relates to your products and services. In fact, you've spent a lot of time on it to ensure you've gone from best practice to business case.

So why are you picking up the shotgun? Spraying your content pellets all over the room won't buy you much other than a lucky hit here and there and a lot of backlash grief.

Is that really the attention you want to attract?

I understand, though. You're under a lot of pressure to secure visibility and generate leads. The powers that be think that if you hit an industry influencer just hard enough, you'll get his or her attention.

You will all right. But not always in a good way.

Relationship building is the critical foundation for generating organic visibility and creating evangelists. That means taking the time to identifying who you want to engage and why. Really make that time for why.

Paying for advertorials or analyst work isn't what I mean either, although that will get you visibility as well, just not necessarily the relationships that can help your business grow long-term.

My colleague Elrond Lawrence hit it right on the money this week with his post Size Isn't Everything -- Relationships Are.

Media relations in the age of social media isn’t rocket science, but it takes time and effort to ensure you’re engaging the influencers that want to hear your story. (It's all in our new white paper Social Influence – Thriving in a New World of Media Relations as well.)

In fact, I'll go a step further and call relationship building with folks who aren't by trade journalists or analysts, those we call Social Voices that we track and analyze with SocialEars -- I'll call it Influencer Relations.

These are HR and recruiting pros, solutions providers and consultants, like me. I've played all these roles on B2B TV and know what it's like to get bumbling and fumbling inappropriate pitches from time to time.

Except this week I received one from a nice young man named Ian Alas pitching the on "The Start-Up of You", a new book coming out by LinkedIn cofounder and chairman Reid Hoffman and entrepreneur/author Ben Casnocha.

He did his homework and even read and referred to a relevant article on my more obscure Daddy blog:

I found your blog and was impressed that your writing, particularly this post, aligns so well with our book's ideas.

Right on, Brother Ian. Well done. I will participate in the companion webinar as well as read the book when it comes out.

Influencer Relations is still relationship building. Make the time and tell the powers to be to chillax.

What? The kids don't still say that?

Size Isn't Everything -- Relationships Are

Honda hit the buzz jackpot with 60 seconds of Matthew Broderick in "Ferris Bueller" mode.

The average advertiser during Super Bowl XLVI paid about $3.5 million per 30-second commercial. That averages about three cents per TV viewer. Is it worth it? I'm sure every one of those companies would tell you yes -- especially when the audience tops 100 million viewers.

It's a much different world for B2B marketers who are trying to spread the gospel of their brand. Last week's post illustrated the dangers of mass mailing your news. Instead of a big bang, HR marketers have to rely on surgical strikes. That means building relationships with writers and influential voices who care about your products and services. A media list can't be solely about press anymore: the net should include bloggers, analysts, and social media personalities.

As noted in our new white paper on social influence and media relations, look for people who have recently written an article – or blogged, tweeted and/or shared information – on a topic that relates to your news. Our SocialEars software was designed especially to help with this. Rather than get swept up in chasing social media personalities with large but general followings, we'd recommend the following tips:

1) Look for topical influence. As with the media, target online influencers who have a focused audience that cares about what you’re selling.

2) Size isn't everything. Influencers vary by industry and preference, and they don't need to be the most popular kid at camp.

3) Just because you haven’t heard of a thought leader, it doesn’t mean they lack influence. “Relationships are much more critical to influence measurement than actual network size," said Jennifer Leggio, a Forbes social media blogger, in a recent post. 

As with any relationship, you also need to contribute. This means joining in discussion groups, sharing other people's content, commenting on other people's blogs, and creating some of your own groups. It's a different approach to traditional media relations, but worth every minute of time.
 
The tools have changed drastically, but the core principles remain. Become a resource. Tell compelling stories that inspire influencers to share them digitally. Develop meaningful content that offers a unique perspective and share knowledge with your target audience. Keep current with industry news, blogs, Tweets, and online conversations instead of “cramming” a week before your product launch.

Media relations in the age of social media isn’t rocket science, but it takes time and effort to ensure you’re engaging the influencers that want to hear your story.


Posted by Elrond Lawrence, HRmarketer media relations

Dear No Name (or, How to Get Blacklisted by a Journalist)

The one guy who might read an email to No Name.

Last month I received an email from a job-matching company who shall remain nameless (you'll see why in a moment). Now I usually don't read emails with the subject line "Build Your Candidate Pipeline" since I'm hardly a recruiter . . . but for some reason I opened it and was greeted by the words:

"Dear No Name,"

Wow. Really?

Obviously something went haywire in the mail merge, so I sent a quick reply gently informing them of their goof  -- and said a little prayer that they hadn't blasted this same greeting to 50,000 people.

What's sad is that "Dear No Name" is hardly the most painful pitch I've encountered in the last 10 years. No, that honor goes to the HR companies that email their news releases to journalists with a subject line that reads only "Press Release." Or their company name. Or "HR."

If by some miracle these pitches aren't deleted instantly, the fun continues in the greeting above the press release, which is supposed to A) sum up the news and B) tell the media person why they should care. Some greetings have typos. Some pitches don't bother with a greeting. Some don't bother with a greeting or a headline -- they just begin with the first paragraph of the press release.


Even on those emails that exceed the above criteria, most don't bother to use the name of the person who's supposed to read their news. These emails might as well start with "Dear Mass Mailing Victim."

For all the days, weeks (and sometimes, God help us, months) we spend writing, crafting, rewriting and approving a press release, it boggles my mind when a company devotes little or no though to the distribution.

Try this article pitch, sent last month to our blog (typos are preserved):

"Hi,

I would like you to consider my article "Picking up vital signs of impending employee resignation" for publication. I have not found much on this subject online or in print, so this subject will be useful for your readers. All the necessary publication info is in the attached document. Look forwad to hear from you."

Really, is there any doubt this was a mass mailing? Maybe the "marketing" part of our name wasn't clear enough.

That's why we just released a new white paper, "Social Influence: Thriving in a New World of Media Relations." The playing field has expanded from journalists and analysts to include bloggers, tweeters, and industry personalities whom you may never have heard of, but who nevertheless have a devoted following. If you're trying to tell your company's story, you cannot afford to send impersonal, shotgun pitches . . . or to blow off building relationships with the people who write about your space.

The article is free (no registration!), so download a copy here. You'll learn about brand visibility, content marketing, media analytics tools like SocialEars, and the importance of relationships. At the end there's a checklist of media relations tips. Even if you jet-ski over everything else, read the checklist before you send another pitch. Believe me, you don't want your pitch to show up in someone's PR failblog.

Posted by Elrond Lawrence, vice president of media relations

Listmania and Social Influence

Last week the HR Twitter world was ablaze with the release of John Sumser's latest "Top 25 Online Influencers in Recruiting" list. It's the fifth edition of John's popular ranking, but the first time he's used our SocialEars to compile it. As you'd guess, we were thrilled to see our media analytics and monitoring technology put through its paces in a very public way. It was fascinating to see the results and the vocal reaction that followed.

As you'd expect with this kind of list, the top 25 influencers (including our own Kevin Grossman) happily announced their rankings and congratulated each other. Hey, I would! Some people debated the accuracy of the choices. And people argued about the choices. Tim Sackett wrote a very entertaining blog post that's worth a read.

In the end, the response to John's Top 25 was pretty much the same as every top 10 list we're deluged with at the end of the year. Lists are insanely subjective. But they stimulate conversation and debate, and that's what makes them fun.

To this PR guy, what's more interesting than the actual list is John's commentary about the power and nature of social influence. He's quick to point out that the players are changing faster than ever. Five years ago it was easy to spot HR industry influencers: journalists and analysts who worked in traditional outlets. Today it's a free-for-all. The lines have blurred between analysts, journalists, and “social voices" – people who aren't officially journalists or analysts but nevertheless have strong thought leadership. The trick is not to find the person with the biggest following, but the people whose followers care about your products and services.

John chose SocialEars because he recognized its power to navigate the overwhelming explosion of social media data. Since it collects and analyzes articles, tweets, blog posts and social content, he could search for a specific topic and get instant lists of the people who cover that topic online -- writers, tweeters, bloggers -- and read their published articles, posts, and tweets. We use SocialEars primarily for media relations, but it's also handy for market research, competitive intelligence, locating speakers and researching material for white papers and webcasts.

While the results display scores from Klout and Peerindex, along with relevance and importance rankings, SocialEars has never been about measuring influence. In other words, we gave John the best tool for the job and it was up to him to interpret the results.

What's ironic is that the top 25 list -- love it or hate it -- is already obsolete.

"Influence is volatile and social media is unforgivingly focused on what you’ve done lately," John explained in his introduction to the list. "There’s no future in social media and precious little past. You are exactly what you’ve done recently."

Preach that influence gospel, brother John.

Posted by Elrond Lawrence, VP of media relations; watch for our upcoming white paper on social PR and media relations.

Don't Forget the Call to Action! Sounds Simple, I Know. But it Happens.

I received an e-mail from the president of Chico State University, my alma mater. "Fancy!" I thought.

He's going to appeal to my sense of loyalty to the place where I spent some of the best years of my life. He's going to inform. He's going to challenge me with a strong call to action.

This felt special since I'm not used to receiving e-mails from the university president. It's a mass e-mail, yes. But never is the sender the university president and the subject line read,"CSU Receives No New Funding." Sounds serious. So I open the e-mail.

Fast forward through the five paragraphs worth of information to the end. All I heard was a loud thud as the message fell flat.

I read through it again because maybe I missed something. Then I realized the author and whomever executed the communication missed something.

The California State University (CSU) system receives no new funding. OK. The governor of California is proposing a $200 million cut to system's budget. Ok, that sounds serious. The CSU system has had to implement sizable tuition fee increases. Yeah, that hurts.

I stare blankly at the screen wondering exactly what's expected of me.

What a colossal missed opportunity.

Nothing about, "write the governor and here's his address." Or, "help us storm the state Capitol in a mass march." Or, "vote to increase your state taxes."

Wait, what? The last one sounds like a tougher sell than the first two options. But you didn't even ask!

It sounds so simple but apparently not so obvious.

When you're communicating with your audience, a captive audience in this case, don't forget to tell them what you want them to do. Don't be shy. Just ask. And, make it as easy as possible for your audience to do what you want them to do. Remove the barriers and give them the necessary tools to act.

I won't unsubscribe from the mailing. But learn from this. Send an e-mail to your prospects where the message fails and you may hear the collective stampede of clicks of folks unsubscribing.