Note to marketers: Less talking, more listening

I'm often amazed at how many times I need to hear a message before it sinks in. In the marketing world, they say a person has to actually see your message at least six times or more before it motivates them to take action. When you are the one responsible for getting the message out those six times, its humbling to be reminded that listening is more important than talking.

My business partner, Rustin, and I have been working like crazy people for the past month building a new set of Premium features to help bloggers get more visibility for their blogs. We've sorted through hundreds of emails from users who write to us with suggestions, ideas, complaints, kudos, and "what ifs". Every time someone takes five minutes to write us an email or tweet us feedback, its like a gold nugget of insight. Making time to sort through this feedback is one way of listening. But listening is not a one time event. Its not like you can listen today and then say you're good for the rest of the month.

Our next step is to build the features we heard people wanted, give them back to users to play with and then ask "Is this what you wanted?". Its another way of asking "Did we hear you correctly?" After you do that, shut up and listen again. If we marketers would stay quiet long enough and tone down our urge to put thoughts in other people's heads, we might actually hear what they really want. Its way more efficient (and profitable) to give users what they really want instead of trying to convince them they want or need something you want them to want.

So we've had our listening hats on for weeks. We released the new set of Premium Features on Friday to our Community Leaders, a group of 30+ super-users who love our product and are opinionated about what makes them happy. The pickier the better, I say. We emailed, twittered, and talked on the phone. We walked through every screen and asked about icons, links, messaging and expectations. We made changes over the weekend and today we'll send our Premium features back out into the world to an even larger audience to try. This time, we're inviting our Facebook fans and a set of randomly selected users to give it a whirl.

Once we invite them to try it, I will bite my tongue and listen. If you teach your users that you are open to receiving criticism and feedback (and genuinely mean it), you will find a very willing audience of people eager to help make your product better. So stay tuned and I'll share how this next "wave" of features was received.

Note: Want to be one of the users to try our new Premium features early? Sign up here and let me know what you think. I promise I will listen :)

6 tips for getting your blog noticed

I read lots of social media blogs and participate in some great blogging communities and one of the most often-asked questions by bloggers is "How can I get more people to notice my blog?" While there are books and entire consulting business built around answering that question, there are definitely some basic, self-help tactics that can make a huge difference. I work with thousands of bloggers and here are six easy tips that seem to really help:

1. Twitter
If you are a blogger, it really pays to learn to love Twitter. Its a great way to share your new posts with a large audience and find other blogs to comment on. You can also search Twitter by topic (i.e. "teenagers" or "day care") and share your posts with people who are looking for info you might have blogged about.

2. Use Categories and Tag on your posts
Both Blogger and Wordpress let you add keywords to each post (and WP lets you add categories). Assigning a category to each post helps your readers find "buckets" of posts that were written about the same topic. If they liked your posts about "disciplining a toddler" or "getting toddlers to each vegetables", they might like your other posts about toddlers. Also, take a few moments with each post and think about what terms someone might type into Google. Adding those keywords helps search engines connect your blog with people who are looking for topics you've written about. Here's a great article from Problogger on Using Categories and Tags Effectively.

3. Comment on other posts
Not just a quick "hi - love your pics!" but a genuine, thoughtful comment that tells that blogger you really connected with their site and looked around. Your comment can add value to that bloggers post by providing even more info for their readers. Make your comment as interesting to read as the post.

4. Guest post on other blogs
Most sites and blogs are always looking for more content and posts. It gives the blog author a break for a day and exposes your writing to new readers. Its tempting to think that your efforts would be better spent on your own blog but giving to others ALWAYS comes back to you.

5. Link to bigger blogs
I'm not suggesting you go link-crazy but its helps your Google rankings when you link to larger blogs that have high "credibility" ratings with search engines. So if you are posting about something at Target, go ahead and hyperlink to their site. If you blogging about a product, store, celebrity, quoting from a news source, visiting a city - link to their site.

6. Add social tools to your blog such as BlogFrog
BlogFrog is a network of almost 20,000 bloggers who all link to one another via widgets. So when you visit a BlogFrog site, your blog actually shows up on their widget for ALL their readers to see. It drives reciprocal traffic. You can even add an instant community to your site that lets readers interact, which draws more traffic. (In the interest of full disclosure, I am one of the founders of BlogFrog. Members have shared many stories about how their traffic has increased after signing up for BlogFrog because more people were discovering their blogs so I thought it appropriate to share).

Just wanted to share some tips that bloggers I have worked with seem to really like. If you have tips or advice you'd like to share - please comment!

Is it healthy to let kids win at games?

I was playing chess with my teenager this week and it got me thinking about the many years we have spent playing games – chess, checkers, card games, Monopoly, Risk and dozens of others. When he was younger, I would often let him win and it got me thinking about the benefits and pitfalls of letting kids win at games.

Some experts claim that letting kids win at games gives them a false sense of confidence and undermines the natural process of dealing with failure. That letting kids win is essentially stealing a learning opportunity that would otherwise motivate them to strive to get better. “Throwing the game in the kid's favor is not a healthy way for him to learn about relating and playing well with others…” says Alyssa Giacobbe in her post Why I Never Let my Four Year Old Win at Games.

Others believe that letting younger kids win helps balance the intellectual inequality that clearly exists between parent and child. In games of skill and intellect, an adult win is hollow and only teaches kids that they can never win. In her iVillage.com post, Should You Let Kids Win at Games?, author Sarah Caron quotes Susan T. Howson, a professor of early childhood education at Ryerson University in Toronto. "Younger children often have a harder time losing a game and (associate) losing a game with not being good at anything. As self-esteem and self-confidence are developing, losing might be a hard thing to swallow." says Howson.

Whether or not letting kids win is a good thing depends on the awareness a parent brings to the decision. In her post Letting a Child Win, How Bad?, Sabrina Weill at ParentDish.com quotes some great points from Robert Schachter, a New York City-based psychologist and faculty member of Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

• Be a teacher, not a staunch competitor. "It's just like how, until a certain age, you make decisions for your child. Then, as they start to be able to make decisions for themselves, you still tell them your decisions but you carefully explain to them your rationale so that they start to learn how to make decisions for themselves."

• Up your game as the child improves. "When he can fight harder, you can play harder. You don't need to let them win every single time if they have equal abilities. You need to help a child learn the skills to fend for themselves. I think the more success a child can feel the better, but you do need to teach them the skills of competing so you should push against them as hard as they can push back."
  

• Remind yourself why you're playing the game. If your child has become an equal rival at a game, it's one thing to play hard against him or her. But if you're clearly far stronger at a game, Schachter asks, "What's the point of winning when you're playing a child? If the adult is always winning, it just makes the kid feel like he can't win."

I can actually see both sides of this argument and the right answer really depends on each circumstance and each child. But there is one aspect of the debate that I have experienced, but have not seen discussed much. It’s the idea of compassion and empathy. I would let my son win for very simple reasons. I wanted him to feel good and to see him happy. And it made me feel good that I could give that to him, however sneaky and subtle. So we both ended up feeling good. I probably stole some learning opportunities from him that I will regret later but sometimes its hard to choose in favor of long-term learning when instant joy is right at your fingertips.

Now that my son is a teenager, I am starting to see him show that same compassion and empathy to others when it comes to games. Chutes and Ladders and Memory have given way to NASCAR video games and I sometimes watch and play. I really do not like playing video games at all but I do it anyway to stay connected to his teen world and share in the things that he enjoys. Just because I don’t like them, doesn’t mean I can’t support him. Something surprising happens when we play. He wants me to win. He wants me to enjoy myself.

He’ll drive his car backwards or go the wrong way on the track on purpose just so I can win. He’ll choose a faster car for me and a slower one for himself. If I get in a jam (bridges and hairpin turns tend to send my car off the nearest cliff), he’ll take my controller and guide me to an easier part of the track. When we play Guitar Hero, I get to play on “easy” and he plays on “expert” so I can win. He clearly isn’t playing to win. He’s playing to play. And not only is he playing for his own enjoyment, he’s taking an active role in making sure I enjoy myself, too.

That’s profound.

It tells me he’s playing from his heart, not his head. It tells me that somewhere inside, he gets the idea that giving so everyone can win is far more enjoyable than being the best. Or perhaps he’s reached a level of confidence in the game where he has nothing to prove, his ego is safe, and he can just let go and have fun. Whatever the reason, it makes me proud and absolves all the guilt I’ve ever felt about letting him win when he was younger.

Do you let your kids win at games? Why or why not? Join the discussion in my reader community here!