Disruption is for Idiots

Technology journalist Michelle Bruno's most recent article, "What Disruption Really Looks Like," prompted me to phone her. 

In the course of our conversation, she asked me why tech company executives—disruption's tireless cheerleaders—so often rest on their laurels.

In my answer, I fell back on one of my favorite words, hidebound.

Tech company execs who succeed, with few exceptions, turn hidebound; and their standpatism leaves their companies exposed.

Hidebound is often applied to larger-than-life figures of military history.

Major General Ambrose Burnside, a West Point-trained insider, was one.

In December 1862, he caused 13,000 casualties in one day, when he threw his troops against Robert E. Lee's entrenched Confederates in two assaults at Fredericksburg.

Burnside wasn't an idiot. He simply assumed he could use tactics that had worked for his century's greatest soldier, Napoleon. But Napoleon's soldiers faced smoothbore muskets, not rifles.

Too bad he wasn't an idiot.

Like all West Point insiders of his day, Burnside was blind to the effect of a disruptive change in technology.

Idiot comes from the Latin word idiota, an "outsider."

Disruption takes an idiot: an outsider unschooled in the assumptions, unversed in the tactics, and unacquainted with the rules, the business models, and even the names of the players.

The insiders are all hidebound.

Disclosure: The hero of Michelle Bruno's extraordinary story is my employer.

Do Long Engagements Lead to Marriage?

In the penultimate scene of When Harry Met Sally, Billy Crystal tells Meg Ryan, "When you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start as quickly as possible."

As we know from chick flicks, long engagements don't usually lead to marriage.

Only in the Bizarro World of the web does anyone promise otherwise.

Advocates of long-form content insist long pieces lead to long engagements; long engagements, to sales.

How long? 

Their tests show 1,500 words are good; 2,000, better; 2,500, best.

But Kevin Delaney, editor-in-chief of the news blog Quartz, thinks differently.

As he told RetailDive, most long-form content is padded with uninteresting, B-grade matter.

“What people read online, when you look at the data, is shorter stuff that’s focused, creative and social with a really good headline. It doesn’t mean it’s unsubstantial. It just means it’s really clear about what’s interesting and focuses on that."

Long's fine, provided it's riveting; when it isn't, you want it to stop as quickly as possible.

As critic Roger Ebert once wrote, "No good movie is too long, just as no bad movie is short enough."

7 Required Reading Containers for Every Marketer

Need that perfect gift for the marketer in your life?

Try a reading container (book).

Here are my top seven picks for the year:

Daily Rituals. Mason Currey's little book delivers an enchanting look at the work-habits of nearly 200 composers, filmmakers, novelists, philosophers, playwrights, painters and poets.

Email Marketing Rules. Moses took four decades to write his laws. So we should be grateful it's taken only half that time for someone to codify the rules of email marketing. Chad White's encyclopedic treatment is a must-read.

The Content Code. Mark Schaefer makes all the other social media gurus look like chumps. Want to crack the code? Crack open this book! And if you want more social media marketing secrets, read Jeffrey Rohrs' Audience.

Communicate to Influence. Speech coach to the stars Ben Decker shares his secret method for swaying any audience. Learn why triads are the "perfect framework" for sales pitches, product launches, motivational talks and business briefings.

Trust Me, I'm Lying. Media manipulator Ryan Holiday's book does for the Internet what The Jungle did for meat packing. Trust me, you'll never read Business Insider, The Daily Beast, Drudge Report, BuzzFeed, Politico or Huffington Post with credulity again.

Writing Tools. Roy Peter Clark's advice to writers, simply put, is the best book of its kind. And if you want to really impress the marketer in your life, pair it with a copy of William Blundell's classic, The Art and Craft of Feature Writing.

Born to Blog. Blogs are foundational to social success, and Mark Schaefer's street-smart advice is priceless.

How to Take Advantage of the Challenges Facing News Organizations

PR expert Edward Segal contributed today's post. He has placed stories in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times, and is author of Profit by Publicity.

The challenges you face in convincing the media to do stories about you or your company is matched only by the challenges editors and reporters face in gathering and reporting the news.

In order to produce their news products—such as a daily newspaper, the latest posts on their Web site or social media platforms, or nightly TV news program—editors, producers and their staff must contend with a never-ending series hurdles. These include:

• Making decisions on which events or activities to cover, especially in the face of late-breaking news.

• Weeding out the truly newsworthy press releases from the hundreds of apparently superfluous, irrelevant or poorly written ones that they receive every day.

• Fact-checking stories.

• Finding the best available experts to interview, explain or provide perspective on  technical or complex stories.

• Maintaining staff morale in the face of budget cutbacks, mergers and acquisitions among news organizations, and the creeping influence of some advertising departments on the news judgments of editorial personnel.

• Providing enough time and resources so reporters can adequately research stories and be properly prepared to interview people for them.

• Ensuring that the work of their reporters, editors and producers meets the criteria of good journalism. 

How do you turn the media’s lemons into your lemonade? To ensure that, despite their problems and difficulties, you’re able to convince news organizations to do the stories you or your company want done? By going the extra mile to help make their jobs—and their decision to do stories about you—as easy as possible. Here’s how:

Help them with their homework. Provide them with as much background information as you think is appropriate about your story, including news releases, fact sheets or other stories that have been written about you or the topic. 

Don’t wait until it’s too late. Give editors and reporters as much advance notice as possible about scheduled events such as news-making special events.

Show them the story. Find the best possible visuals to "show" your story as well as tell it; and be sure to let the news organizations know about your visuals when you contact them. 

Give them ideas. Call editors and reporters with story ideas that you think they may be interested in, even though those ideas may not result in news coverage about you. By showing them you are a resource of information and ideas, they will be more receptive to your calls later when you pitch them a story about yourself. 

Provide good sound bites. Once you have the media’s attention, take full advantage of the opportunity by providing them with the quotes they need to help tell their story to their audiences. The better your quotes, the more likely it is that they’ll be used… and that the reporters will come back to you in the future for more interviews.

3 Phrases You Must Not Use in 2016

The year's about to end.

It's list time.

Mine consists of three pretentious phrases everyone in business should retire.

Across the enterprise. Romulans fired torpedoes across the Enterprise. Throughout the company is clear enough.

Take offline. Employed by teleconference leaders to quash unwelcome discussions. If drop it is too brusque, hold that thought would work.

Go viral. Shared content shouldn't be likened to SARS and Ebola. Become popular sounds just fine.

Which phrases would you ban?