Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

As I hit “publish” this morning on my very personal post about my parents, I worried a little that the few readers who expect to hear about marketing and technology and such would be (once again) rolling their eyes/ignoring their feeds from miss JLJ.

But about an hour later, my sheepishness went completely away when I received an email from an angel who was paying attention:

“Hello Janet Lee Johnson,

I am Linda Sue Johnson! I found your blog through a Google news alert for macular degeneration. I am sorry to hear about your parent’s health problems.

My mother had dementia. I found one thing that helped. Omega oils. If you go to Sam’s Club of CostCo, you can buy a month’s supply of LiquiMax for about $12.00. It contains many good nutrients including Omegas 3, 6, and 9. It takes like citrus and I like to put it in orange juice and/or 7Up. My mother had become very paranoid. We started giving her LiquiMax and within a week she turned into a happy five foot two year old.

As for the macular degeneration that my sister also has, in about 5-10 years there are two treatments that should be available. Stem cell treatment (from the patient’s own body) and Muller Glial Cell treatment.

In the meantime, please take good care of yourself. I have not had the chance to read your blog but I do know that watching parents age in poor health is very stressful.

Take care
Linda Sue Johnson”

Linda was kind enough to let me publish her email in entirety, as she said:

“Please feel free to use any information I give you to spread some good.”

Consider it spread, Linda, at least in my heart. Thank you for that.

It showcases two things to me:

1. the passion of people to help others
2. the power of persistent search

Put them to good use in your own lives - you never know what might turn out as a result!

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Here’s how I’ve been spending time recently. My apologies for the personal nature of some of this, but I figure if it can help others fight the good fight for their aging parents and the situations they face or people who take advantage of them, let’s go!

Anyone is welcome to steal phrases or entire sections of any of this - might as well share the time I’ve spend writing…

The aging population is more and more on my mind now, especially as I’m getting older right along with my parents. And while technology can help in many ways, we really have to rely on people to help in these situations. In example one (my mom and dad) I got immediate response. I just wrote example two this morning, so it’s too early to tell how that will play out.

My Mom and Dad - situation - failing minds and eyes.

Good morning.

I’m writing to connect with someone about exploring resources for my parents, who live in Longview.

Mom is 84 and dad us 83. Mom is blind (macular degeneration) and dad is battling dementia which seems to be getting worse. Other than that, they’re both relatively happy and healthy, it seems.

Read more »

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Building and monitoring your own personal brand online is something I’ve coached students, colleagues and CxO’s on for several years. I learned why it’s so necessary when I was at Marqui and responsible for their controversial “paybloggers” campaign.

My personal reputation and the company’s reputation were put to the test in a very public manner for a good two years. I’m happy to say mine has remained relatively buoyant and unscathed, but it has taken diligence - which is more than I can say for Marqui.

I’m reminded that I learned the hard way, in reading an article in Advertising Age last week by William Arruda and Kirsten Dixson called “How to build the ‘brand called you’ in an online era.”

They give some very useful tips as to how to build your personal brand online.

1) First you Google yourself and find out how visible you are. That’s step one for any brand - personal, product or company. Type your name (in quotes) in your favorite search engine: e.g. “Janet Johnson”

JJ says: A good ‘extra credit’ step would be to go to Technorati (a blog search engine) and do the same thing. You might be surprised at the additional information you might find.

2) What’s your “GQ?” (Google Quotient) You should know the answer to this - how do you rank in search results? The article offers the following rankings:

• Digitally disguised - there’s nothing about you on the web.
• Digitally dissed - there’s little about you on the web.
• Digitally disastrous - there’s plenty of information about you online, but it has little to do with what you think or want known about yourself professionally.
• Digitally dabbling - we’d find some on-brand information about you online.
• Digitally distinct - we’d find plenty on you, reinforcing your unique personal brand and promise of value.

3) Position yourself as you would a product. And then (more importantly) ask yourself - is what I’m about to post online in support of my personal brand position? If in doubt, don’t.

4) Build your brand. They recommend maintaining a blog, creating a professional web site and using online networking sites. In my opinion, if you create a profile on LinkedIN or Facebook, you’re off to a good start. Your participation online is a great differentiator for you. Start slowly if you must, but start today.

5) Be constant. (Their words, not mine - I’d say) Monitor your brand. As you work to build an online reputation, consistency is good, but awareness is key. Set up a persistent search on your name (with an RSS tool like Attensa - which will constantly monitor the web for mentions of any search keyword or phrase) so you’re notified instantly whenever someone says anything about you.

Awareness and brand are increasingly accessible online. You’ve opened yourself up to conversations, let them flow. But (as in the real world) your reputation will require the most diligence and care.

Set yourself up for success in the long run - join the conversation and monitor the conversation. And don’t put anything online you wouldn’t want your mother to read tomorrow morning.

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In all of my years blogging (which haven’t been that many, I’ll admit) I’ve never seen a company be so inauthentic or be less transparent. And, keep in mind, I worked for Enron for two years. But Marqui, my last company (under new direction) has taken the cake.

It seems they’ve scrubbed the first two years of Marqui’s World (the company’s blog) of Tara Smith’s and my names as authors of more than 300 posts there.

I found out when someone asked me whether I hadn’t blogged for them, because they couldn’t find anything written under my name.

And it’s not as if they’ve been keeping the blog up on their own. Upon researching the  situation, I found their last post was dated February 22; and I counted only ten posts since my farewell post in September of 2006.

It’s pretty ironic, since they make software for blogging and web content management. Looks like they want to play in the game, but are completely and shamefully faking their way through it.

What have they got to gain by that?

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In an interesting post today at Slow Leadership, author Carmine Coyote describes four laws of information flow:

• First Law: Upward flows will contain only good news
• Second Law: Downward flows will be limited unless they are negative
• Third Law: Sideways flows will depend on trust and liking
• Fourth Law: Bad news travels farther and faster than good

In describing these tenets as based in human nature (we only share with those we like, we always want to be seen in the best light, we never want to be “the bearer of bad news,” etc.), it makes sense that:

“If you want to get good information, make yourself liked and trusted, whether you’re in a boss or a subordinate relationship with the person who has the data.”

And that:

“…there is a continual skewing of data towards the negative, especially over the short term. If a new initiative is launched, the quickest feedback will be the most extreme, whether positive or (especially) negative. That sometimes leads to organizations and people making bad judgments. Ideas are dropped on the basis of quick feedback that suggests problems. The good news takes its time to filter through and by then it’s too late.”

Slow leadership, then, is giving information time to develop, bubble and get to you in its entirety.

But that seems (pardon me) slow. In today’s competitive, information-rich and time-starved economy, I believe there is a better way. And sometime I feel like I’m beating a dead horse, but I’m subscribing to the basic law of training:

• Tell ‘em what you’re going to tell them. Tell them. Tell them what you told them.

Tenets for Enterprise 2.0 Communication Leadership

• First Law: Empower your employees.
• Give them the communication tools that will:
• Give them a voice (like blogs, wiki, collaboration and email tools)
• Track conversations productively (and “just in time”) by subscribing to them (via RSS)
• Set boundaries (legal and ethical as well as brand…) so everyone knows what’s out of bounds to talk about. (Trust me… Your PR group isn’t the only group who needs to know communication boundaries any more.)
• Second Law: Tell the truth.
• Employees can smell inauthenticity and untoward behavior a mile away. Don’t expect them to let inaccuracies (no matter how small) stand. It compromises their integrity and yours. And remember Coyote’s Fourth Law, above.
• Third Law: Expect communications.
• Employees should be required to communicate with you / your customers / your partners / and each other in written form, captured in a knowledgebase. This goes especially for large organizations.
• Fourth Law: Be responsive.
• This is not to say you cut off projects or people at the first negative flow of information. Reach out whenever something bubbles up and do something like:
• Ask for help - in a communicative organization, someone’s likely to have encountered a similar issue, and can recommend options.
• Set the record straight - rumors are often more rampant when ignored.
• Admit mistakes - if something bad happens, deal with it. Again, issues come and go quickly in today’s information rich economy.

I’m a big proponent of quickly capturing, assessing and addressing issues as they arise.

Where does slow come in? Every decision, every word, every communication you build for a lifetime contributes to your communication leadership resume.

Over time, you’ll know information will flow up, down, sideways and absolutely hit the fan once in awhile.

How you deal with it will define you, and perhaps even set you apart as a wonderful example of human nature - evolved.

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