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Jan 26 2009

What’s Your Story?

By storytelling

Ever hear of a little company called Google? What are they famous for? How about the Mayo Clinic? What are they famous for? What’s your company famous for? If you’re not sure – or worse, your answer is something like “technology solutions” or “IT services” – I can help.  Mighty Casey Media helps you create content that tells the remarkable stories that make you & your company famous. Content that tells the stories about the value you deliver in the marketplace. How do you paint a word picture, or script a video, or build a presentation that effectively tells your story? How do you construct a content library that draws in prospects and helps retain customers? You need a remarkable story that rides on humor, and humanity. A remarkable, human-focused story is the foundation of all your business communication content: web copy, marketing materials and campaigns, public relations, presentations, blogs, webinars, podcasts, the whole business-storytelling enchilada. Make your story funny and you really stand out from your competitors. Your human story also at the heart of how you develop strong relationships with your customers. Your story is how you build and maintain your brand, how you manage your reputation in the market, how you influence and direct market response to your products and services. It’s also the only way to build an inbound marketing strategy – that “pull, not push” approach that pulls in your target customers, that sells them on buying from you before you have to “sell” them. Making them laugh will put them in the  mood to buy, if you make them laugh in a way that focuses on you, and your value. If you need to create compelling content, if your company is struggling to make sense of social media, if you’re getting asked to speak frequently…

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Jan 14 2009

The Story on Social Media: One Mouth, Two Ears

By Uncategorized

The always-full-of-great-information Sarah Evans, @PRSarahEvans on Twitter, and one of my favorite Tweeps, shared some really stunning stats today from Adam Singer’s The Future Buzz blog. One mindblower of a statistic, among a buffet of them, is that there are 346,000,000 global citizens who read blogs. Wow, I’d be happy to have .1% of that number reading this blog! I found myself thinking as I read Adam’s post that there’s a lot of talking going on out there on the Wild Wild Web. The really critical part of social media, however, is LISTENING. It’s tempting to think of one’s web platform(s) as megaphones – Hey look! Over here! It’s me! That’s fairly par for the course in human interaction: we’re all interrupting each other constantly, usually about 20 seconds in to what the other person is saying. Reminds me of Gary Larson’s classic “What Dogs Hear” cartoon – you’re blathering away at your dog, all she hears is her name. Blah blah blah blah Ginger blah blah blah. Same holds true with social media: people only listen if they hear something they want to hear, that their ears (eyes?) are tuned for. Everything else boils down to blah blah blah. Unless, of course, what you’re saying is pitched to their tuned ears – their wants, needs, curiosity, value system, whatever you want to call it. Which means you’ve got to listen. Listen at least twice at much as you talk. The web ain’t a megaphone. It’s a conversation. I’m going back to listening now. That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it…

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Jan 07 2009

The Story on Twitter and #daniela – Only Connect

By Uncategorized

Only connect. When E.M. Forster wrote that in ‘Howards End’ in 1910, the first iteration of wireless – radio – was in its infancy. We’ve come a long way, baby. In many ways, the complexity and scope of modern communication – connection – mean that there’s lots of the former, but not much, at least not in a meaningful way, of the latter. ‘The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate.’ Joseph Priestly presciently said that in the late 18th century, and it holds even truer in today’s communication-saturated world. However, there are some stunning examples of how the complexity of 21st century communication can enable connections of the most human, and humane, kind. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the story behind the Twitter hashtag #daniela. David Armano, a big noise in the complex web that is new media, is one of the people I follow on Twitter. If you don’t know what Twitter is, go find out, but after you read this, OK? I missed the kickoff of his conversation about Daniela yesterday, but my attention was snagged today when another of my connections – Tweeps – tweeted (Twitter has created an entire lexicon of its own) about @Armano’s campaign to help out a woman with three kids who has just escaped a horrifically abusive marriage and is trying to get her life back. All the pertinent details are on David’s blog, so I won’t give you the blow-by-blow. What I will tell you is that David started a ChipIn pass-the-hat to raise some chedda to help Daniela and her kids get back on track. He set a goal of $5,000.00. As of this afternoon, the total raised was approaching $13,000.00, and still rising. In less than 48 hours. THIS is the power of connection….

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Jan 07 2009

Mistake? I Don’t Think So…

By technology

Ever hit ‘send’ and then screamed ‘noooooooo!’ Come on, we’ve all done it. Gmail has even created a feature called ‘Mail Goggles’ to prevent what used to be called ‘drink and dial’ – initiate the feature, and Gmail will make you do math problems before you can send an email. Highly useful tool for those who hit ‘send’ while soused. What about those moments when you’re sitting at your desk, stone-cold sober, and you find yourself hitting ‘send’, after which you think you’ve just made a huuuuuge mistake? Well, that might NOT have been a mistake. A client of mine called me today in a panic. Apparently, while selecting some folks in Outlook to request LinkedIn connections with, this poor soul had inadvertently selected everyone in the database, and then hit ‘send’. And then screamed ‘nooooooo!’ I asked, ‘and this is bad news because….?’ In the time since ‘send’, a dozen ‘yes!’ responses had come back from LinkedIn. Some of these connections were people my client hadn’t been in touch with for years, and with whom she had some seriously good professional history. Here’s the moral of this particular story: you only get what you ask for. Being a ‘private person’ is laudable. Hiding your light under a bushel won’t get you any attention at all. And it might set fire to the bushel, which has all sorts of other unpleasant consequences. What are you doing to get some positive attention? Are there people you knew three businesses ago that would be great connections for your business today? The tools are there to reconnect. Just hit ‘send’! That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it…

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Jan 05 2009

A Great Story On Healthcare IT

By EHR, health records, healthcare industry

In today’s Health Care Blog, David Kibbe MD and Brian Klepper PhD continue a discussion that they kicked off with an open letter to the incoming Obama administration in December about health care IT and electronic medical records (EMR/EHRs). Patients think that EMR/EHRs are the answer to their prayers – no more forms to fill out, no referral slips to carry around, hey-presto, it’s all on this flash drive. What Kibbe and Klepper point out is that’s just the tip of the iceberg: “…we are realistic about the problems that exist with health information technologies as they are currently constituted. As we described in our previous post (and contrary to some recent claims), most products are NOT interoperable, meaning licensees of different commercial systems – each using different proprietary formats – often find it difficult to exchange even basic health care information.” In other words, let’s not create a tower of Babel just because IT tools exist that will let us. There’s enough failure-to-launch across the medical-care sector now: forests of paper records that are a bear to manage, much less share; HIPAA standing like Colossus over every single one of those sheets of paper; and the rising tide of ‘perfect EMR solutions’ that have been developed in the last few years. There is no ‘perfect solution’ – what’s required is that healthcare realize that it’s an IT business, just as every other commercial sector has come to realize over the last decade. “…many health care professionals still think of health IT as a compartmentalized function within health care organizations. But health IT has increasingly become the glue between and across all health care supply chain, care delivery and financing enterprises. In the past, it was enough for health IT to facilitate information exchange inside organizations – in which case…

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Dec 26 2008

Cancer for Christmas – One Year Later

By cancer

I had my annual mammogram this last Tuesday – remembering how last year’s formerly routine event wound up, to say I was a little nervous is a vast understatement. Here’s the news: I’m now officially a survivor. Looking back at the last 372 days, I have to say it’s been quite a ride. So many people have helped me, have lifted me up, have kept me from feeling that terrible aloneness that’s part of fighting a life-threatening disease. ‘Thank you’ sounds inadequate, but it comes from the deepest and most tender part of my heart. I will finish the first draft of “Cancer for Christmas” by New Year’s Day. Then it’s on to finding an agent, a publisher, or – best of all possible worlds – both. I’ll be reaching out to Save the Tatas and the Susan G. Komen Foundation, offering them a piece of the cover price in exchange for helping promote the book once it’s published. My goal is to help anyone in the fight – against cancer, or any other life-changing disease – navigate the medical car-wash and manage their medical care for their benefit. Because if you don’t, no one else will. 2008 has been quite a journey. I’m in an incredibly wonderful place, which I don’t know that I would recognize had I not had my dance with the Cancer Troll. 2009 is already a mortal lock for my best year yet – I wish you the same!

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Dec 16 2008

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain (If You’d Like to Stay Blissfully Ignorant)

By cancer

I lost my health insurance the other day – and I’m not going to look for it. I have reason to be very glad this didn’t happen last year, given the cancer-for-Christmas gift I received at my mammogram last December. Now that I’m in the self-pay column, I called the imaging practice where my next mammogram will take place to ask what the cost would be. I have seen Explanation of Benefits (EOB) statements from my insurer – when I had one! – that listed the above-the-line cost as $600 to $1,000. Then there was the ‘negotiated discount’, and the other horse-trading hand signals that brought the cost down to around $350, which the insurer then paid the doctor. Every EOB I’ve ever seen had this sort of dance on it – high initial cost, the insurer does a ‘look what a great deal we got for you!’ discount jig, and hey-presto, the final price is reduced by 50%-or-more. So, when I called the imaging center, I was bracing myself for sticker shock. I did get sticker shock, but in the other direction – a screening mammogram is $135, a diagnostic mammogram runs $120-$180, and ultrasound, if necessary, adds another $75. Meaning the worst-case cost scenario is….$255. Mention health care in any circle, and you’ll hear cries about costs spiraling out of control, of doctors who lose money seeing HMO patients, of hospitals taking it in the shorts on equipment and supply costs, of patients paying $200 for an aspirin (I guess that’s ’cause a nurse delivered it in a little paper cup?), of that last week of dad’s life when his hospital bill hit $100K. Here’s a question – could it just be because of managed care that costs have managed to careen out of control? I’m old enough…

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Dec 10 2008

The Story (& the Song) Remain the Same

By technology

I think I’m on to something. Not that this is entirely a surprise, but it’s nice when the universe sends you positive feedback fast. Today, the Greater Richmond Technology Council had an IT recruiter + candidate mixer called TechNOW. Given the current landscape locally, with Qimonda closing its chip plant, Genworth dealing with a mortgage-market induced stock price meltdown, and Circuit City sinking like a dying whale, the job market is heavy on the candidate side. Which is true in every market across the globe, I think. What was great to see today @ TechNOW was the number of people actively engaged in discussion about consulting and project-based work, which is the non-job sort of money-for-value-given engagement I was getting at in yesterday’s post. I had the opportunity to do some individual coaching with a guy who’s got a deep background in web-based process & usability IT. He’s got two of the area’s biggest employers on his resumé, with many years of service at both of them. As we talked, it became clear to me, and I think to him, that he has mad skilz, and heavy experience, in that web-enabled business process development. Why not start branding himself as an expert in that area, using social media tools to engage with companies he’d like to work with? Not work for, ’cause this is the Brave New No-Job World, baby. I think he agreed with me. That’s why I do what I do – I live to help you tell your very best story. Today, I think I made a difference, which makes all the difference to me. That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it…

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Dec 09 2008

The Story on the Whole Jobs Thing (at Least AFAIC…)

By Uncategorized

Jobs numbers have, to quote Forbes Magazine, fallen “off the table”. Everyone knows at least a dozen people who are un-, or at least under, employed. And several more who are decidedly nervous about their continued employment. Here’s what I’ve been thinking for quite a long time now: jobs are dead. Long live daily individual value delivery. This is a multi-channel challenge. I can hear the benefits administrators of the world saying, “oh, HELL no!” I can hear the education system, in this country and many others, protesting that they’re teaching to the test already (pumping out potential employees), and if they have to start teaching critical thinking again…well, things could get ugly. I can hear the legions of job-holders around the world winding up their best roundhouse kick to knock my block off. Change happens. If you’ve been on the employee train for a long time, trying to wrap your mind around not finding another job when you lose the one you’ve got can be downright scary. Just ask Paul Nawrocki, who lost his in February 2008 when the toy company he worked for went under. Nawrocki has become both internet, and news-network, famous, thanks to his self-propelled mobile advertising (f/k/a “sandwich board”) – what a great opportunity to recast himself as a buzz marketer! I’m kidding. But not really. What times like the present call for is a change in thinking, for all of us. The job may not be dead, but it is on life support. Start thinking like a consultant, a freelancer, a solopreneur, even if you toil alongside thousands of co-workers at a Fortune 100. If you don’t bring it – “it”, in this instance, being that daily value delivery I mentioned above – the out-of-work sword will constantly dangle just above your cranium. Don’t…

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Nov 18 2008

Sustainability Story Will Be Written By Technologists

By technology

The Greater Richmond Technology Council’s Sustainability Summit on Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2008 led a series of conversations about a variety of sustainability/green topics, from carbon footprint and energy resource management to implementing and best practices for ‘going green’. The discussions, led by business technology experts, touched on IT issues, but were really driven by the recognition that sustainability is a business responsibility enabled by technology. In all of those conversations, panelists made similar points: -Sustainability programs are becoming a business imperative, and not just for PR reasons -Sustainability initiatives can deliver operational efficiencies with clear bottom-line value -Getting buy-in across the enterprise is the first step to meaningful sustainability efforts -Technology/IT has become a leading force in enterprise sustainability programs In his opening remarks to the Summit, Gov. Tim Kaine said that 25% of all development in Virginia has happened in the last 30 years. The state is losing 60,000 acres of open space every year, putting pressure on one of the state’s leading economic sectors: agriculture. These facts make it imperative to develop a statewide environmental policy, which is under development. The Commonwealth has developed an energy plan, with buy-in increased due to rising energy costs. “Low cost doesn’t encourage conservation,” said Gov. Kaine, noting that 2009 has been designated as the “eco-year” for his administration. Gov. Kaine is pressing the Southern Governors’ Association, whose members include 16 southern states, to adopt a regional climate change accord, matching efforts by other regional governors’ associations. This would help to address the concerns of two major industries in the Commonwealth, agriculture and forestry, both of which are highly vulnerable to climate change. The Summit’s panel discussion “How Big Is Your Carbon Footprint?” explored the importance of determining an enterprise’s carbon impact – the first step in developing a sustainability plan. “Green”…

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