[Advice] 3 Stages to Launch – Part 2

There are three hard parts to launching any peace building project:

The first hard part is attaining technical knowledge (i.e. getting a degree, getting experience, phoning a friend, etc.).

When launching a peace building project, the savvy peace builder often doesn’t think too hard about the first part. In peace building fields from mediation to law, attaining technical knowledge is considered a rite of passage. Which is why peace building is so dominated by the presence of volunteer labor at one end (mediation) and highly paid labor at the other end (litigation) and there is a squeeze in the middle. As a result, many peace building practitioners continue to fund a self-perpetuating economy of training and certifications, rather than doing and experiences. This is a hamster wheel for another reason: The training and certifications are to reinsure that the peace builder continues to remain proficient in old skills they already know and practice (i.e. mediation skills) rather than training and certifying them in new skills that might be uncomfortable fro them to learn and practice (i.e. marketing, sales and business development).

The second hard part is getting the hardware together and attaining a certain level of comfort with it, particularly if it is new.

When launching a peace building project, learning new hardware (or software in the case of many entrepreneurial peace builders) is the second hardest part. Admittedly, there are ton of applications and software solutions that can be cobbled together to create the operational infrastructure for a functioning business model. But too often peace builders (as do many other entrepreneurs) become so focused on avoiding learning the new application (or fiddling with it constantly) that they miss completely the third hardest part of developing and launching a peace building project—sales.

The third hard part is developing content—and allying with partners in that development—and getting that content distributed to the right audience to genrate a lead, create a relationship and to close a sale.

When launching a peace building project, content development—books, articles, blog posts, podcast episodes, workshop/seminar content, and on and on—is seen as the most overwhelming aspect of launching. At the core of most content development practices are three objectives for the peace builder to consider:

What do I want my content to do? (i.e. drive brand recognition, drive sales, create actionable leads who will pay, etc., etc.)
Where do I want my content to be distributed? (i.e. from a workshop, from a blog post, from a podcast, etc., etc.)
Who do I want my content to target? (i.e. women with children, business owners with conflicts, men in divorce, judges in arbitration, etc., etc.)

Unfortunately, many peace builders get caught in a spiral of focusing obsessively out of fear on “how to make money” rather than focusing on “how to make a difference.” To be successful as an entrepreneurial peace builder, the things is to manage thinking about how hard the three hard parts might be to accomplish collectively, rather than avoiding actually taking the concrete steps to think (and act) differently about at least one of them individually.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Advice] How to Read an Analytics Report

If you don’t measure it, it hasn’t happened.

At least that’s the clarion call for many in the worlds of Big Data, analytics and the growing field of measuring content marketing.

But for the blogging peacebuilder, just the mention of the term “analytics” can generate beads of cold sweat. The same term can bring on a cold sweat in others as well.

But there are three simple types of reports that, when accessed, can make the peacebuilding blogger understand better what is going on with their posts, their curated content and their social distribution efforts.

Social Distribution Analytics Reports—Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and many other platforms, allow any user to look at how their posts, likes, and updates are tracking across the platform itself. These reports are very insular, and only reveal what happens with an audience member, a customer or a client inside the platform of choice. For instance, in the case of Facebook, if a blogging peacebuilder is posting regularly from their blog to Facebook, they can track the organic reach (free) and the paid reach (paid) of each item that they post. And the data on it’s users is so extensive, that any peacebuilding blogger could spend days staring at the data.
Blog Platform Analytics Reports—No matter what content creation and distribution platform the peacebuilding blogger uses, from WordPress to Typepad, each platform measures how often each post is opened, read and even what times during the days of the weeks this action happens. In WordPress and Blogger platforms, the data tracking users and readers comes bundled with access to Google Analytics (which we’ll talk about below). Where the platform based analytics reports really come in handy, are when the peacebuilding blogger wants to launch a plug-in that might serve to provide more functionality for her user/audience member.
Google Analytics—The 800 lb gorilla on the analytics block for many, many bloggers, marketers and others, are analytics provided by Google. The reports, measurement, trends and other tools inside of Google are deeper even than the data offered through Facebook. It’s relatively easy to get either a plug-in for a WordPress site or get access to Google Analytics by setting up a blog in Blogger before had, with a unique tracking code that stays on your website. When reading a Google Analytics report, the amount of data provided by Google to the peacebuilder can be incredibly overwhelming. The two areas initially that we would recommend the peacebuilding blogger to focus on would be the Audience Overview section and the Uses Flow report. Audience Overview in Google Analytics provides the peacebuilding blogger with analysis and tracking around from where audience members are accessing their content (mobile vs. desktop), how long they are staying on the site before they leave (bounce rate) and whether the website visitors are “new” or “returning.” Report generation is relatively easy (just set up the ability to get a report based on specific parameters (new vs. returning/mobile vs. desktop inside of Google Analytics) and Google will email the report to you.

Getting analytics reports is not the main problem in reading an analytics report. The main problem for any blogger, is figuring out how to best convert visitors to your site and your content to actual sales. Analytics reports that measure marketing efforts (video creation, blogging, ads, etc.) provide data that the peacebuilding blogger can use to determine where to best place their time and energy.

If it’s not being measured, it hasn’t happened. The follow-up to that statement is that if it hasn’t been acted on after it’s been measured, then all the measurement in the world is just thrashing and hiding.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Getting Out of the Ghetto

Human civilization doesn’t need another social network.

It is a sign of the limits of our present level of creativity and value addition, that the top websites on the Internet right now, tend to be ones that are focused around two areas:

Sharing, collecting and curating information to a wide sphere of government officials, corporations, communities and individuals, who have their own motives and desires.

Shopping and engaging in commerce for the express purpose of either paid consumption of products and services (Amazon.com) or free consumption of products and services (anything in the Google family).

Shopping and sharing dominate the internet, and thus create values in the stock market, because the first generation of totally Internet savvy entrepreneurs, visionaries, creatives and others has not yet come of age.

The current crop of adults (those 21-64) creating the Internet realities with which we all live, are digital immigrants, trapped in the ghettos of their own making—walled gardens of apps, physical mobile technology and bandwidth controlled by companies built on the old, Industrial Revolution models of corporate formation.

But, there is a future coming where the digital immigrants will be left behind. The true digital natives, who will live their entire lives of communication, education, entertainment, consumption and creation in the digital space have yet to come of age.

When they do, they will leave the walled gardens and ghettos that appear so shiny to all of us now, because we lack the imagination—and the courage—to head West into the vast space of the Internet and pioneer something different.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Podcast] Virtual Ghettos – The Earbud_U Minute

Ghettos are popping up all over the virtual place.

In the physical world, the ghetto began as a way to segregate Jewish populations from other populations in Italy and all throughout the rest of Europe. Then, if Wikipedia is to be believed, ghettos came to the US, first as a way to segregate the Irish and Italian immigrants, then as a way to separate African Americans from predominantly White populations.

With that in mind, look down at the screen of your smartphone. How many apps do you have?

How many different neighborhoods, or ghettos, do they represent?

In the virtual space of the Internet, information may want to be free, but people apparently want to be crowded into virtual cities and neighborhoods—with all of the separation, regulation and virtual social norming as informal policy.

As we innovate further—and as digital natives move further and further away from the ghettos that digital immigrants seem comfortable in—the question we must ask ourselves is: Which comes first, the regulation or the innovation?

We have to figure this out as a global culture, because physical ghettos lead not only to segregation, biases and prejudices (which may prove to be minor annoyances in the virtual space) but also to poverty, lack of access to resources and reduced opportunity (which may prove to be even more damaging in the virtual space that in the physical world).

Conflicts between those in the virtual ghettos, those in the virtual suburbs and those on the virtual frontier need to be addressed by people who have experience with emotional intelligence, active listening and strong facilitation ability.

-Peace Be With You All-

[ICYMI] Curating Vulnerability

We tell ourselves compelling stories, where the drivers of the conflicts that move the narrative along, are not us, but others.

We do this for two reasons:

We want more credit for successes and less blame for failures.
We get uncomfortable with tension and discomfort.

In an era of curated reality, the biggest tension is between the realities we choose to show our audiences, versus the realities we know exist inside of us.

Social media provides somewhat of an outlet for us to resolve this tension. However, too many people keep telling the same faulty story, where we are the stars and everyone else is a goat.

In reality though, we are just perpetuating the tension and creating more unreality.

But, what is “real?” Is the “real” person the one that lives inside of us, or is the “real” person the one we display to the world via our endlessly streaming social feeds?

Acquiring authenticity requires us to be vulnerable in ways that we cannot, because we have never learned to be vulnerable within ourselves, too ourselves, and by ourselves.

The leading of double lives are destroying and reshaping the social contract, and the results of that destruction are ongoing and endless intrapersonal conflict, as well as depression, anger, resentment, impatience, and narcissism and so on, and so on, and so on.

Originally published on December 15, 2014.

Download the FREE E-Book, The Savvy Peace Builder by heading to http://www.hsconsultingandtraining.com/e-book-the-savvy-peace-builder/ today!

[Advice] Who’s Afraid of Reaching?

The same people and organizations that are afraid of starting to blog—for whatever cultural organizational reasons—are starting to become perplexed as to why their reach to fans and audience is plummeting on social media.

Our advice is the same as before, but there is another piece to this equation as well:

When distribution platforms change the ways in which they let an organization talk to fans, followers and audience members,

And

When “people might read long form content even though it’s statistically shown to not be read by anybody much anymore,”

And

When the hard, scary part of starting an organizational blog seems to be around the voice, tone and message conforming and being exactly the same, no matter who writes,

THEN

The real issue is not “who’s afraid of blogging,” the real issue is “who’s afraid of doing the hard work of stretching and reaching.”

Many organizations (no matter what sector of the economy they are in—nonprofit, higher education, corporate, public service) have a fear of being perceived as being vulnerable. This is where the rubber meets the road:

Reaching is the process by which the organization says “to hell with it” and reaches for that vulnerability anyway and starts engaging with fans and audience members and trying to build their own house, rather than safely squatting in a house already built for them, and grumbling every time the rules change.
Reaching is a sign of an organization taking stock of long term people goals (and taking those goals seriously) rather than giving lip service to them, or only focusing on the short term financial goals.
Reaching is the first (and simplest) step towards empowering people in any organization.
Reaching, just like training in conflict resolution, emotional intelligence, and so on and so on, is easy to begin, but hard to follow through on.

Many, many organizations in many sectors of the economy have figured out the equation.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Strategy] Platform Assumptions

Distribution platforms are for more than just flooding an audience these days. They are now said to be forums for two-way communication and engagement, rather than one way alleys.

However, this assumes a couple of things about the nature of both distribution and engagement:

The first thing it assumes is that every person to whom an article will be distributed will have an interest in being engaged with.

The second thing is that it assumes that all forums are inherently social and designed for the back and forth that engagement implies.

Both of these assumptions are false on their face and limiting, both to the content being distributed as well as the level of engagement from the audience in question.

Just as every conflict does not need to be mediated, every distribution platform does not need to be a platform for the back and forth of engagement, commentary and opinion.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Podcast] Earbud_U Episode #4 – Elin Barton

[Podcast] Earbud_U Episode #4-Elin Barton, Owner & President, White Knight Productions, LLC., Bootstrapper, Social Media Video Marketer

[powerpress]

Oh my, the trouble with bootstrapping, right?

Elin Barton is the owner, founder and President of White Knight Productions, based out of Vestal, New York.

Elin has an incredible background in film and video work. She is also a marketer who understands, at an instinctive level, the power of the moving image and how it can impact how we buy, try and even follow.

The team at White Knight Productions is amazingly talented and they have developed a unique vision and approach to addressing the needs of their clients. Where video marketing is the future, the team at White Knight is blazing a trail there as fast as they possibly can.

And Elin did all of this through bootstrapping. Not taking a dime of VC funding to build your own project is about as brave as it comes, particularly when you have a family and other responsibilities, yet many, many women are becoming entrepreneurs and are making the move to do this. They are truly pioneers and showing the way forward.

And, Loddy Doddy is pretty friggin’ funny as well…

I was very excited to talk with Elin and I look forward to talking with her more in the future.

Check out the links below and book Elin and her crew at White Knight today:

White Knight Productions: http://whiteknightpro.com/

WKP on Twitter: https://twitter.com/WhiteKnightVid

WKP Blog: http://whiteknightpro.com/blog.html

WKP on Google +: https://plus.google.com/+WhiteKnightProductionsVestal/about

WKP on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/whiteknightpro

Elin Barton on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/elinbarton

Check it out here on Soundcloud–> https://soundcloud.com/jesan-sorrells/elinbartonsavestheday

Download the Latest Episode of Earbud_U!

[Podcast] Earbud_U Episode #1 – Darren MacDonald

[Podcast] Earbud_U Episode #1 – Darren MacDonald, Corporate Consultant, Start-Up Investor, Web Commerce Guru

[powerpress]

Occasionally, you get top start on a project that is the beginning of a new direction and my interview here with Darren MacDonald, is the perfect example of that beginning interview.

Darren is funny, engaged and a totally great guy overall. And whiplash smart.

He worked in the bottled gas field with a family business for almost twenty years, and knows a thing or two about conflict and engaging with it effectively and not ruffling feathers.

He’s involved in a ton of projects and it’s always a laugh riot when we get together. I loved talking to him and he’s the only guest on Earbud_U to get a “Director’s Cut,” which I will release…someday…soon…

Feel free to connect with Darren via LinkedIn

His website & blog: http://darrenmacdonald.com/

His presence on Quora: http://www.quora.com/Darren-MacDonald#

On Twitter: https://twitter.com/upwordz

Check out the interview above!

Or, link to Soundcloud here–>https://soundcloud.com/jesan-sorrells/earbud_u-episode-1-it-all-comes-down-to-darren-macdonald

Download the Latest Episode of Earbud_U!

[Advice]The 3-Fold Path to Self-Awareness

The more work we do through training others to get in touch with themselves, the more and more surprised we are by how few people in organizations are in touch with themselves.

There are three pieces to self-awareness:

The ability to be vulnerable—which is typically translated as “the ability to be wrong,” but that’s a misnomer and faulty definition. Being vulnerable means knowing when to show your heart…and when to keep it hidden.
The ability to be authentic—which is usually confused with being vulnerable, but that’s a surface understanding. Being authentic means being able to let down your emotional guards enough to “make a fool of” yourself, and to be able to accept the consequences of what that means.
The ability to be transparent—which is usually transposed into the question asked most often in our trainings: “Do I really have to tell my [insert name of group I’d rather not be transparent with here] everything that I do?” No. But in order to become self-aware, the first step toward being emotionally literate, a person has to be comfortable with honesty and beyond the crippling effects of shame.

Without attaining those three pieces of self-awareness–vulnerability, authenticity, and transparency–getting to emotional literacy will be impossible for any individual.

And in the organization of today—and the future—emotional literacy, spearheaded with self-awareness, will be the trait of leadership that separates organizations which thrive from those that merely survive.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/