Courtesy: igourmet.com

Since we are a day away from Thanksgiving I thought I would use a turkey to emphsize the importance of establishing baselines when measuring new media.

So…you and your family show up at your sister’s house for Thanksgiving. It’s loud. You’re glad to be there. You shake hands with everybody, kiss inlaws, and grab a beer. The talk is about Obama, football, congress, health care, the kids, and the inlaw that always has the bad jokes. And he’s got several this year.

Your sister announces that there will be no carving of the turkey this year because she has become a vegan. “Dinner is served!”

Silence.

Why the silence? Because the turkey is the baseline. It’s what we measure the dinner by. Everything is now out of whack. The gravy, potatoes, biscuits, dressing…everything.

Same with new media. If you have nothing to measure against…then everything is out of context.

Your Twitter account…do you have a baseline for the amount of followers that you should have? Are you aware of the number of followers following your competitors. Have you set a realistic goal and timetable for followers?

Your Facebook account…have you set a baseline for the number of fans you need to be relevant. Again, look to your competitors.

Same with YouTube, Flickr, your Website, etc.

Engaging with consumers is critical. But do you have a goal with regard to traffic that needs to be reached and maintained in each of your new media communication channels? Traffic first. Engagement as it grows.

Back to the turkey. Well, this never happened because my sister knows the importance of the baseline.

And Good Thanksgiving holiday to all of you.

I can almost taste that first bite of moist turkey laying next to the mash potatoes smothered in gravy.

Pass the biscuits please.

I was in a discussion that other day with an excellent writer and we were talking about the biggest game-changer in the last few  years. I think it is technology, in general, not just the Internet.

Why? Because it has forced governments, companies, large associations, etc. to consider a new communication strategy. Technology, meaning cell phones, phone recording devices, computers, and the Net,  allow citizens to become reporters, editors, op-ed writers and educated observers of large events.

What does that mean? It means that large organizations can’t have just a push strategy where messaging and products are just pushed into the marketplace, or into the population. Technology allows the common citizen or customer to respond and publish what they like and what they don’t like. And in given certain circumstances these responses get wide circulation.

Case in point: British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called a recent widow of a British soldier killed in Afghanistan. Nice thought but he didn’t count on the technology. She recorded the conversation, and she gave him heartfelt powerful feedback about Britain’s lack of support for the soldiers in Afghanistan. He was reduced to mumbling almost inaudible responses. Well, the conversation went world-wide, landing. among other places, on CNN. Lesson here; be prepared for published feedback and have a strategy of humanity for it.

No longer can companies or governments be big clumsy entities just spewing products and messaging. Talk back is now in the millions of conversations everyday. And these conversations are filling the distribution channels.

And sometimes these conversations are filled with human emotion and awful loss.

Companies and governments must now have a voice and have the confidence to have many be a part of that voice. And have the confidence to continue the dialogue, humanely.

That’s the biggest change, in my opinion, in the last few years.

Recently the MountainWest Capital Network announced the top 100 fastest growing companies in Utah. Proud to say that number 7 on the list was SwarmBuilder (aka 3point5).

I founded 3point5 about six years ago. As with every new idea, it takes awhile to get traction. People, although believing they are early adapters, really aren’t.  We got traction when we showed the outdoor companies how many retail salespeople were actively selling their stuff on a daily basis and how few where actually being trained on the brand and its products. The hook? What if we trained these people on line? We could reach a lot of them, especially if you provided product as incentive.

Well, thanks to some forward thinking companies we got traction, and then capital.

And to jump to the here and now…I am very proud of the SwarmBuilder management team. Together we built something special. Almost all of my first hires are still with the company and doing a terrific job.

So, go forth ladies and gentlemen of SwarmBuilder. Continue to prove invaluable to your customers.

And thanks for making this boy from Indiana look better than he is.