Before the strategy

Before I had a strategy, I probably had the setup you have:

• One business card with all my details: name, office phone & fax, postal address, email address and mobile number.
• One email address for everyone. Sounds simple.

The problem

When you network regularly with people who assumed that a business meant permission to receive their newsletter, you can start to get a lot of emails. Some do ask for permission,  you say yes, because it is polite, but not always because it is wanted.

You set up rules in Outlook, but still constantly see there is all these unread newsletters. It makes you feel behind. You end up deleting without reading because you get so behind. That doesn’t benefit either party.

Some questions for you

How many hours do you spend reading emails every day?

More importantly, how much time do you spend thinking about the pile of emails?

What does your inbox do to your mood?

The strategy

Two business cards:

(1) The same one as above that you give to qualified opportunities and clients

(2) A networking card – with no mobile and a general email address that is collected daily by someone on your team

Set up several email addresses with different purposes

Primary business: Work emails related to opportunities and projects that I collect and they are received into a CRM where they almost 100% are attached to opportunities or projects

General business: Networking card address and used on forms that require an address. If someone emails me personally at this address, it is forwarded to me and I can action.

Business mail: Newsletters and communications from groups I’m a member

Online: Online networking emails

Personal: Friends and family

The outcome

I can completely segment my time by which email address I am looking at.

It works well when busy and need to focus without too many distractions.

It gives me a clearer head.

Then if I have some time, I can look at the Outlook emails and register for networking events I want to go to and catch up on the newsletters.

This Tribal Tool-Kit ActionMap survey “How was the weekend?” asked:

1.    On Friday, we look towards the next two days with certain expectations. How important were these aspects for you on Friday?
2.    Now the weekend is over, how satisfied are you with the level of achievement with these aspects?

Below are the aspects and the numbers for the ActionMap key:

1.    Socialising
2.    Exercise
3.    Catch up on home to-do list
4.    EOFY (End of Financial Year) preparation (Dec 2009 – Christmas preparations)
5.    Catch up on work to-do list
6.    Relaxing

Here is what our ActionMap was able to deduce:

This shows us that both ’socialising’ and ‘relaxing’ were pretty important for most people and that most people were pretty satisfied with each of them by the end of the weekend.

It also shows us that anything to do with work and the end of the financial year weren’t really given too much importance for the weekend and delivered very little satisfaction.

When it comes to ‘exercise’, it seems that this was of moderate importance yet delivered  low on satisfaction. Given that it was perceived as being important though, it could do with some attention (for those who participated in the survey at least). Catching up on work at home was also considered of moderate to high importance but also delivered little in terms of satisfaction. Again, it seems that those who completed the survey might want to give a little more focus to this aspect of their weekend.

So how does this compare to our December ActionMap?

What we did in December was almost identical except, where we asked this year about the End of Financial Year preparations, we asked about Christmas preparations.  Below are the results from December 2010:

The first thing of note is that the ’spectrum’ of importance this time around is greater than last time. In summer, it seemed that everything had a reasonable to high level of importance (ranging from a mean score of 3.3 to 5). This time around importance scores range from 1.6 through to 6.0. Satisfaction scores are almost identical to December 2009, ranging from both 3.4 and 3.5 to 5.6.

It seems that ‘work’ and ‘obligatory’ activities (such as preparing for the end of financial year or Christmas) continue to be low priorities. This time around, exercise has become more important but maintains a similar level of satisfaction.  This may suggest that most (if not all respondents) came from somewhere in wintery Australia and are less active as a result of the weather – but wish they weren’t.

Work around the house is slightly less important but still derives the same amount of satisfaction as December 2009.

Again ‘relaxing’ and ’socialising’ derive the most satisfaction for our participants. However, it seems that our current respondents were somehow privy to the December results.  Improvements have been made to the level of satisfaction gained from ‘relaxation’ and the benefits of ’socialising’ appear to have been imparted – bravo new participants!

Though this ActionMap is just a bit of fun, it does demonstrate how a short, simple survey administered amongst your tribe can help you get some answers about your brand’s successes. A short, smart survey can also give you some indications as to where you should focus your attention to help bring your brand into line with where you would like it to be.  If you would like to know more about how the ActionMap or any other part of Tribal Tool-Kit can help you and/or your business, please feel free to contact Tribe Research via email (ask@triberesearch.com.au) or by phone (+61 2 8096 2546).

…And with a new week freshly upon us and another weekend fast approaching, perhaps insights we have gained here will help to guide you towards a weekend where you get as much satisfaction as you can from doing all the important stuff (i.e. socialising and relaxing!)

Until next time…

Happy Exploring!

But, we need a Mapper!

Mappers can do a range of things to support other members of the team:

• Assist researchers by doing
  • data entry of paper based surveys
  • telephone interviews for very short surveys
  • put data from our statistics software into graphs and reports
  • finalise report formatting
• Book-keeping
  • manage team general expenses
  • MYOB data entry
  • prepare BAS and superannuation reports
• Administration
  • manage our general email accounts
  • generate regular reports from CRM
  • maintain stationery & other office supplies
  • manage incoming and outgoing post

We’re thinking that this would be a part-time role, preferably 9:30-2:30 each day (so 1/2 time). The number of days is flexible depending on your interests, skills, and other commitments.

Tribe Research is a quantitative market and social research supplier. We work with a range of SMEs, non-profit, and government organisations.

We don’t want your CV, but would love to see one page about why you want to work at Tribe Research.

• What 3 things make you excited?
• What 3 things irritate you?
• What will you bring to the team by joining us?
• What do you want to learn while at Tribe Research?

Email your one page to work@triberesearch.com.au

A few weeks ago a list of 10 things the next Federal Election should be about and will be about was posted by Glebe2037. We’re not saying we agree or disagree with his list, but thought that a selection of the points would be interesting in an ActionMap.

An ActionMap survey asks participants to rate a list of items, on a scale of 1 (low) to 7 (high) in terms of importance and satisfaction. It then maps the actions when the survey is closed.

Importance question: Glebe2037 posted a list of things the next Australian Federal Election should be about & what it will be about. I thought it would be interesting to see how important you feel these things are:

Satisfaction question: How satisfied are you with the performance of the Australian Government in their current term? After you finish the survey you will be redirected to Glebe2037’s post. We’ll blog the results soon.

The aspects

1. Environment & Sustainable Development
2. Paid Parental Leave
3. Cost of Living & Interest Rates
4. Taxation & Budget Deficits/Surpluses
5. Mental Illness & Homelessness
6. Agricultural Practices & Land Management
7. Protecting Our Borders
8. Change at a pace that will not scare people
9. Public Funding of Medical & Scientific Research

The ActionMap: Use the list above for the description of the numbers in the ActionMap below.

There were 41 people who completed the survey. It was completely anonymous and promoted through social media and forums interested in the topic. So, we’re not saying that it’s a representative sample.

According to the participants, the Federal Government needs to improve: Environment & Sustainable Development, Mental Illness & Homelessness, and Agricultural Practices & Land Management.

Taxation & Budget Deficits/Surpluses is an area they’re performing best and it’s of high importance, which is why it’s on the edge of ‘Send to Marketing’. Similarly Cost of Living & Interest Rates is also on the edge of ‘Send to Marketing’ as it had higher importance than Taxation & Budget Deficits/Surpluses but they weren’t as satisfied.

The other consideration in interpreting an ActionMap is the scale. These are the numbers in the corners of the ActionMap. While the importance stretches almost all the scale, the satisfaction ratings were all below the mid-point of a 1-7 scale, 4.

The ActionMap is one of the tools in Tribal Tool-Kit.

We’d love to hear your thoughts.

1. Research is an ongoing expedition, not a static project. It’s the best way you can drive change in your organisation. Read more about the feedback cycle in action.
2. You need to involve everyone in your  organisation when you want to get feedback. They all have a perspective they’re sharing inside and outside of the organisation and shaping other people’s views.
3. You need to find out the words that people use to describe your organisation so you can see if they are the same words you use. If they aren’t the same, then people are getting mixed messages. You can do this easily with a CloudMaker mini survey and then make a word cloud.
4. Find people who can give you a different perspectives and challenge your views.

Kate Tribe had a conversation with Hugh Liney for the Telstra Enterprise Podcast Series that covered these points. You can listen to the Podcast on their website.

It can be the first place prospects see you, so you want make sure it’s sending the right message.

Just reading your website is a good way to start. Check consistency of phrasing between the website and what you say when you talk about your business, as it might’ve changed since you wrote the website copy.

Most people scan a website, jumping across words, so a great way to check the message of your website is to have a list of the words, ordered by frequency. Are the most common words the ones you want people to remember? Are there any typos in the list?

Here is a simple way to check the words on a website page using CloudMaker in Tribal Tool-Kit:

1. Login to Tribal Tool-Kit. You can easily create an account if you don’t have one. You get 3 credits for CloudMaker and this only uses 1, so the check is free.
2. Click on in the red banner along the top.
3. Click on in the gray menu on the left.
4. Fill in the form with:
   • The name of your business
   • Your website address
   • Change the 4 next to “Minimum word length” to 1 (then all words are loaded into Tribal Tool-Kit and you can see if you have too many small joining words making your website difficult to read).
   • Click “Get Page Words”
5. You are told whether the page loaded successfully or not. The first line will tell you how many words have been retrieved from your website. Click “Accept Dataset”.
6. You will see a table with the words and their frequency. The most frequent at the top.

Readers of your site will leave remembering prominent words. Make sure they are the ones you want them to have.

This Tribal Tool-Kit ActionMap survey “How was the weekend?” asked:

1. On Friday, we look towards the next two days with certain expectations. How important were these aspects for you on Friday?
2. Now the weekend is over, how satisfied are you with the level of achievement with these aspects?

Below are the aspects and the numbers form the ActionMap key:

1. Socialising
2. Exercise
3. Catch up on home to-do list
4. Christmas preparation
5. Catch up on work to-do list
6. Relaxing

How was your weekend ActionMap

Interpreting the ActionMap

Who would have guessed that relaxing (6) would be the most important with the second highest level of satisfaction! It was just out-done by socialising (1), which wasn’t as important. Not a hugely healthy bunch of participants with exercising (2) having both low importance and satisfaction.  While both Christmas preparation (4) and Catch up on work to-do list (5) were not very important, participants were reasonably satisfied with their progress. There needs to be some improvement on catching up on the home to-do list (3)!

I wonder how it will look in six months time?

The ActionMap shows relative rating of importance and satisfaction. To translate this, the scale is stretched so that the minimum and maximum averages (+/-0.02) are the end points of the scale, not 1 and 7.

Now for the important information

The survey was open for less than 24 hours and had 36 participants who were invited through Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. The participants rated the statements on a 7 point scale (see below). No other information was collected. We don’t know who completed the survey and hadn’t invited only a targeted audience. Therefore, the survey results could be greatly biased, but we don’t know in which way (except we know they use online networking / social media as that was the only form of invitation).

For a business it would be better to invite people to participate through email so you know who the potential participants are, but can still guarantee their anonymity as the ActionMap survey doesn’t collect personal or provide you with raw data.

How the survey appears

You can do your own ActionMap, just head over to Tribal Tool-Kit.

Case study background: Tony Cosentino started a guest book of people attending North Side Coffee Mornings (NSCM or #NCSM) that he has been posting to the North Side Coffee Mornings Posterous site. He wanted to create a word cloud of the people who have come along so the more often they have been to NSCM the larger their name is.

Before he got started we had a bit of a chat, the napkin shows our discussion about it.

Firstly, he set up a spreadsheet with the following format:

• A : Twitter name (eg: @katetribe).
• B : Formula of the sum of columns D, E, F, G etc.
• C : Website address for the twitter name (eg: http://www.twitter.com/katetribe).
• D : Date 1, then column E is date 2, etc. If a person attended an NSCM then they had a 1 put in cell for the dates they attended.

Secondly, the formula column B needs to be copied then paste special with only the values pasted (remember to not save the spreadsheet file as you will then loose the formulas). Then delete the date columns.

Thirdly, save the file with the 3 columns and no column headings as a csv.

Then it is time to play with CloudMaker in Tribal Tool-Kit.

• Click on Upload to CloudMaker.
• The title in this example is: NSCM Guestbook the last 6 weeks…
• The description in this example is: All guestbook data between 29 October 2009 and 3 December 2009.
• Select the file and then click upload.
• As the spreadsheet in this case is already edited there is no need to use the CloudMaker editing features.
• Click on Create word cloud from dataset.
• In the display options section change, Show HTML source to ‘yes’.
• Click ‘re-draw word cloud’ at the bottom of the screen.

Finally, copy the HTML code and paste it into the webpage you would like it to appear.

The outcome: The CloudMaker word cloud below is also on the Posterous site. They look slightly different due to website styling on each site.

Easy isn’t it!  Now other coffee mornings (as well as other events) can start a guest book from the start so that they can progressively create their own word clouds.

They weren’t all one word, some had a little story, and we still included these. For example:

This is what we did to get the word cloud below:

• Copy and pasted the text into a spreadsheet
• Deleted the profile pic, time and ‘comment’. This left the comments.
• Did a few find & replaces.
  • Took out all the symbols by finding . , ) [ ! etc and replacing with nothing
  • To find spaces and replace with comma and space. This allows CloudMaker to make a series of words into separate words for the word cloud.
• Saved as a CSV file.
• Uploaded the CSV to Tribal Tool-Kit.
• Clicked on the ‘Amalgamate similar terms’ link (this will merge the same words so your words are easier to edit).
• Added a list of words to the stopword list. These were: i; my; to; and; the; a; are; comment; dont; for; im; in; it; of; they; still; is; come; with. This means that these words were still in the list of data, but won’t appear in the word cloud.
• Deleted from the list: don’t
• Merged some words that were similar so that they had a higher frequency and therefore appeared bigger:
  • Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and supercalifragolisticexpialidociousi
  • BORING and boringi
  • disappointing and disappoint
  • Mockariffic and Mockorific
  • Mocktastic and mocktasstic
• Clicked on ‘Create word cloud from dataset’.
• Changed the font to: Comic Sans MS (Bold Regular).
• Changed ‘Convert case’ to ‘all lower case’
• Made the maximum frequency colour black (#000000)
• Made the minimum frequency colour pink (#CC3399)
• Changed the ‘Save options and formatting’ to ‘new template’
• Clicked on ‘re-draw Word Cloud’
• Gave the template the name ‘Mocks’ and clicked ‘Save’. There is an option to make the settings the default template so future word clouds have this format as soon as you click on the ‘Create word cloud from dataset’.
• Then clicked on ‘Save as image options’. You can save the word cloud as an SVG, PNG, or JPEG image format. JPEG is the lowest quality but opens in the most applications. The word cloud to the right is a JPEG format.

Simple. And interesting. Lipgloss is so big because we kept the 3 times it was said in the one comment shown above. Great to see the number of ways that fans put ‘mock’ into a word and that ’supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ was used more than once!

I recently attended the Huntington Estate Music Festival in Mudgee with the music organised by Musica Viva Australia. It was the 3rd time I’ve been and now see myself as part of their tribe.

Last year they had a paper based feedback survey that festival goers were asked to complete before leaving. I was happy! I naturally looked at ways the survey could be improved, but was happy the initiative was taken.

What really made me excited was that at the start of the festival, Tim Stevens (Huntington Estate owner & winemaker) said in the introduction, how they’d listened and changed as a result of the feedback.

They completed the research cycle and I wanted to describe what I saw of the process and how the crowd talked about it.

Firstly, they listened. They asked for feedback. At events there are two times to do this: at the end of the event and after they have gone home.

1. At the event: has higher response as participants are there and engaged. They are giving feedback on a recent experience, still in their memory. The down side is that it doesn’t give a considered response. In the case of training, this is an important consideration. At an event like Huntington this is a great time.
2. After the event: generally gets lower response rates as participants have returned to their normal lives. If you want to know their considered response, such as in training, then it can be better to gain feedback at this time even with lower response rates.

Secondly, they looked at the feedback. They considered ways to improve from the ideas they were given and had information for marketing.

Thirdly, they changed. A range of initiatives to make the festival even better were implemented. I hear from buyers of research or people who do research in-house, that it isn’t value for money. My response is: what did you do when you got the results? And often hear: we didn’t have time or resources to act on them. Of course, you then didn’t find it value for money!

Fourthly, they communicated the changes as a result of the feedback. They kept communicating how they were seeing ways to improve. This is a great event already, with growing audiences. They have raving fans, who talked about being heard.

They said it was great they improved X, now it would be great if they improved it this way. That would make it even better.

They commented that they saw feedback forms for 2009 and would complete them so the organisers would know their views again. This is an important distinction because declining response rates is a problem. The fact they knew they were listened to, encouraged them to participate again.

The full cycle benefits in building the tribe. That makes the event greater. That makes their business greater.

Do you complete the cycle or just ask for the feedback?