Teblog

Values-based messaging tackles the green gulf

Abraham Maslow's 'Hierarchy of Needs' was one of the first models that helped me make sense of life and our individual journeys through it. That was in 1975. Little did I know that an even better understanding, from Dr Clare W Graves, had been published just the year before. In its new 'Cracking the Green Code' report, Ecoalign applied Dr Graves' research to what it calls 'the green gap' - the gulf that exists between stated beliefs and environmental actions. Fortunately, the theory is more useful than that, because it can be applied in any situation where mental resistance is high and desired behaviour is low.
All manner of people and institutions are banging the green drum in the hope that they'll induce mass behavioural change. But it's not working very well. "Al Gore", the Ecoalign report says, "did a terrific job of demonstrating the horrible hell that humans will create..." but goes on to say, "Unfortunately, he spent far less time creating an inspired, credible, vision for our collective future."
Somehow the green issue has to be turned around so that, according to the report, "it occurs to target audiences as an exciting opportunity to further their own pre-existing life goals and aspirations'. And this is where Dr Graves comes in. He spent 40 years researching, then mapping, the human psyche in a way that still makes sense even as our behaviours evolve. He identified eight levels of thinking that operate in the world today. At the moment, in North America, four of these levels predominate. They are: Absolutistic, Individualistic, Humanistic and Systemic. A fifth, Holistic, is currently emerging. By understanding each of these, you understand the majority of the developed world. The others are included in the Ecoalign report.
Here's an overview of the four mentioned:

Absolutistic (20% of US)
Life theme: Sacrifice self now to receive future reward
Core values: Discipline, authority and purpose
Goal: Find peace and meaning in this world by denying impulses and upholding moral laws
Perception-shaping metaphor: Life is a test
Key messaging tactic: Call to duty

Individualistic (30% of US)
Life theme: Express self for what self desires, but in a calculated fashion so as to avoid bringing down the wrath of important others
Core values: Accomplishment, power, profit
Goal: Achieve success and influence in this life by strategically manipulating desired outcomes
Perception-shaping metaphor: Life is a game. The world is a machine.
Key messaging tactic: Call to action

Humanistic (30% of US)
Life theme: Sacrifice self now in order to gain acceptance now
Core values: Equality, honesty, relatedness
Goal: To find happiness in this life, in this moment, by relating deeply to other humans
Perception-shaping metaphor: Humans are a family
Key messaging tactic: Call to imagine. Call to compassion.

Systemic (10-15% of US)
Life theme: Express self for what self desires and others need, but never at the expense of others, and in a manner that all life can continue to exist
Core values: Integrity, competence, sustainability
Goal: To restore vitality and balance to a world torn asunder
Perception-shaping metaphor: Life is a system
Key messaging tactic: Call to innovate. Call to service.

From the above, you can no doubt start to slot people you know, or know of, into the different categories. It's little wonder, then, that blanket exhortations don't get us very far. Whatever we're trying to push, whether it's green IT, social computing or electric cars, we need to be able to segment our audience effectively and appeal to the appropriate inner drivers.
The report goes on to explain how it tested the theories by mapping expected values of a group of individuals against actual values by showing them some utility industry video vignettes. While this is unlikely to be central to readers of this blog, it does serve to set the research into a real world context.
But a lot of the report is about the 'what' you need to do, rather than the 'how'. But then this is probably what Ecoalign and the report's author, John Marshall Roberts, are on this earth for: to help with that bit. This in no way diminishes the insights it gives to the ways in which the people around us might be thinking and to how we might adjust our approaches to better match their internal realities.

If you're interested, this blog post by Christopher C. Cowan and Natasha Todorovic throws more light on the works of Graves and Maslow

Because I can

Someone I know has posted a video of himself, very drunk and largely content-free. I was going to link to it here and ask him whether he might regret it. But I realised that I would regret doing this so I refrained.

He had bragged about it on Twitter, which suggests he didn't care. But then he was three sheets to the wind at the time, so perhaps his judgement was in question.

This brings to the fore one of the issues of social computing which is that people upload stuff (words, pictures, movies) just because they can rather than because it might be interesting, informative or entertaining.

This pollutes and dilutes the infosphere (Luciano Floridi beat me to that term by a wide margin). However, the good thing is that no-one has to look, tag or link. But this kind of thing can be permanent and cause damage when it's least expected.

Unless, of course, you're Paris Hilton. Which my acquaintance isn't. Despite filming himself topless.

Minimising my digital pollution

After my recent agonising about whether to continue with Teblog (this blog), I've decided to hang in there. Focus will be around what interests me. And, since I'm essentially a communicator (training, writing, etc) and productivity tool publisher (BrainStorm), I doubt the content will change hugely. Except I'm going to allow a bit more of me to show through.

But... I do not intend to pollute the digital atmosphere with a posting frequency or content designed to attract attention or popularity. Not that I ever did.

I confess to blogging elsewhere - three other places, in fact, shortly to be four (fingers crossed), but I will try to stick to what I think is usefully informative or amusing. The exception in Teblog is that I might indulge in the occasional bit of trumpet-blowing. (A new release of my software or a link to something I've written elsewhere, for example.) If the daily visits reaches zero or close to it, I'll stop.

What sparked this post was a) the afore-mentioned agonising (thanks for you feedback folks) and b) I woke up today to 115 overnight emails, 114 of which were spam. The one that wasn't was a Facebook connection from that nice Mr Al Tepper, ex green blogger and now head of marketing at ethical retailer, Natural Collection. I'm only in there because friends are raving about it, but I'm buggered if I want to hand over all my email addresses to FaceBook.

How long should a blog post be?

Not a new subject in the blogosphere, but it was triggered by two posts today: one was almost 3,000 words and the other 4,000. Each ended with 'to be continued' or similar. Did I read every word? No. After the first few hundred words, my interest in the topic turned into curiosity about why the posts were that long.

Neither was broken up with alleviating cross-heads, bullets, quotes or illustrations. Solid slabs of text - one paragraph alone was three hundred words - are very hard on the reader. This is even more true when being read in an aggregator where other items are clamouring for attention.

I wondered if anyone had produced any statistics which revealed a relationship between blog length and attention span. Clearly, one's interest in a topic would play a part, but there ought to be some general relationship. So off I went in search of some answers. Apart from the odd mention of average attention spans (meaningless really), all I could find was stuff on blog lengths. This is what I learned:

Problogger suggests 250 to 1000 words

Big Blue Wave sugggests 10 to 250, but not more than 500 words

BLOGGING::BUSINESS suggests 300-400 words usually, with the odd short or long one thrown in

ChristianBlog.com insists on a 150-word minimum and 20,000 characters maximum (that's nearly 4,000 words)

A number of bloggers say they "write until it's finished", which suggests a stream of consciousness approach. This also suggests a lack of respect for the reader's time.

Some say either post long and infrequently or short and frequently. (Maybe break long ones into short ones, thus increasing both frequency and readability?)

Others say, "you can always stop reading a long post" which is a bit sad for the author - being uplifted by the hits but not realising that no-one gets to the punchline.

May I be so bold as to suggest to those who insist on long posts that they review the structure and stick in some bold cross-heads which would act as sign-posting, break the monotony and give people encouragement to keep reading?

Trevor Cook and Lee Hopkins explain social media

Trevor Cook (Australia-based PR man with common sense) has teamed up with online communications whizz, Lee Hopkins to write an eBook (free) on social media.

Since I trust Trevor, through his blogging, I recommend the book. I have scanned it and it runs through blogging, podcasting, RSS from the communications (not surprisingly) perspective. If you are in any doubt about what this is all about, then do read it. It explains everything clearly, provides masses of useful links, provides good advice and illustrates with case studies.

RSS feeds in Grazr via OPML

I have trouble keeping track of myself, let alone all the other things that interest me. We're talking here about web-based stuff: news feeds and blogs in particular, but it extends to forums, wikis and traditional websites too.

Amyloo is using OPML and Grazr to document the blogs that surround the BlogHer conference which is currently running in San José at the moment. (That's the Silicon Valley San José by the way.)

I have demonstrated Grazr in my left sidebar for a while to show a simple outline. Inspired by Amyloo, I decided to try and add some feeds. Using OPML Editor, I inserted some feeds into an 'outline' (joke, it's only four entries) and then dropped the file onto my web server. Then I used the Grazr Configuration utility to create this:

Just click on an entry and it will take you to the most recent posts in, respectively, this blog, a blog I co-write with my editors at Information World Review, a blog spun around thinking tools and a forum I manage for Brainstorm Software. Click on an entry with a newspaper icon to the left and you can read the original post. Marvellous! (Update: but only if the originator feeds the full post. IWR appears not to. You can click on the headline to go to the original post.)

See Amyloo's example for something much more profound.

How SME's can interest journalists: a podcast with moi

Alex Bellinger, who created the UK's first small/medium enterprise podcasts, caught me on the hop recently and asked a bunch of pointed questions about how SME's should handle the press. He's no slouch when it comes to PR but he thought he'd use me to get the journalist's perspective.

If you're interested in this sort of thing, or you want to treat yourself to my Estuary English, advance 7m45s into SmallBizPod number 30. Alternatively break yourself in gently and get to know Alex first. The Tebbutt/Bellinger exchange is about 25 minutes.

Who designs BT's web pages?

Just back from a few days away and both phone lines are playing up.

Get onto the BT website and am offered an immediate line check.

Am invited to explain the problem in detail. I saw the large edit box, but didn't notice the small print which said "up to 150 characters". So why not make the box approximately 150 characters'-worth? Who knows what 150 characters is anyway?

Who designs this stuff?

Here's my slap on the wrist:

MySpace conference and new(ish) insights to social media

Yesterday, I went to a conference organised by Jackie Danicki of the Engagement Alliance called "What MySpace Means:Lessons For Every Brand". Bear in mind I've been lurking around the social media scene for some time. So this isn't a conference report, just the (paraphrased) things I found interesting:

Heather Hopkins of Hitwise UK notes that MySpace and hot competitor BeBo are all about people congregating where their friends are. Bebo has an edge here because it it school- and college-related. She noted that once you're part of one network it's very hard to move.

Adriana Lukas of the Big Blog Company talked of humans being non-rational and 'oddly intimate' in their online communications. Minds meet before bodies. She referred to online people as 'digital immigrants'. Censorship or control are perceived as 'damage' and will be routed around. In this space, the demand side is supplying itself which has huge implications for traditional information providers.

Scott Norvell of Fox News talked about people coalescing around friends and peer groups. Coalescing is a word that popped up frequently during the afternoon. He talked of people having more power than broadcast media - citing Matt Drudge. Although media consumption has changed, mainstream media still has tremendous sway. On the dangers of online, he said "children are more likely to be abducted on a church picnic". Young people aren't doing and talking about anything they didn't do before, they're just doing it more publicly on the web.

The Guardian's Victor Keegan talked about the university whose students wouldn't go to union meetings because they were so busy communicating in MySpace. The Union discovered that a lot of potential members were fans of a particular film series. So the Union screened an episode. The MySpace folk turned up en masse but then didn't speak to each other.

He also talked of the shift in power from producers to consumers. And, for the vain (in a publishing sense) among us, he mentioned lulu.com where you could upload your own book and get it printed for a few pounds.

Apparently 2/3 of readers of Guardian properties (on-line and paper) are outside the UK. It has its own podcasting studio as well as various blogs and online pages. He talks of contributing to Guardian blogs for free because he knows he'll get far more readers than he ever would with a self-hosted blog.

Antoine Clarke of Pharma Marketletter (and fiancé of the organiser) stimulated an almighty row when he raised the question of drug companies advertising to the public. Responses ranged from Damian Counsell's "people can't evaluate claims" to Jackie Danicki's "well they can go to the doctor for an opinion".

Alex Bellinger of Audacious Communications wondered whether podcasting really qualified as social media. Without listener involvement and feedback it's just a more isolated form of radio. The conversation moved back to giving listeners control of what's covered.

Suw Charman from the audience pointed out that some corporates love podcasting because they can say "this is the message" whereas blogs are somewhat messier.

Alex agreed. "Corporations love it. It's signed, sealed and delivered. It gives them control." Adding, "but, with an ad at the beginning and a call to action at the end, who's going to listen?" Again the coalescence word came up. If you put podcasts  out for free, this is a good opportunity to coalesce around a show. He then plugged his own smallbizpod as an example of this.

Because of another engagement, I missed the last two presenters, Alistair Shrimpton of Skype and Hillary Johnson of Kerabu, Inc. But I believe Jackie will be uploading her own notes to the conference website.

Was it worth three hours for these few nuggets? Absolutely. And I'm sure the audience got much more out of it than me.

Was my Godin criticism unfair?

Drew Benvie at Lewis PR has indirectly taken me to task for my posts about Seth Godin, and others, switching off comments.

He makes reasonable points.

Consider this post a reflection of them.