Brandwithin | The Knowledge Marketing Center

Social media now accounts for 75% of the traffic on the top 20 Web sites on the ‘New Internet’. New rules have been firmly established.

Knowledge marketing is now the work horse of this new scene. The most fundamental principle that you now must embrace is “Teach - Don’t Sell”. The World Wide Conversation is hungry to find and share knowledge - but not to be sold. Your audience has a finely tuned antenna that won’t tolerate covert sales agendas.

Sharing knowledge has never been easier - with blogs, social networks, Wikis, instant Web sites, video and more.

So how come the ‘picture tells a thousand words’ principle is abused with PowerPoint presentations so habitually?

It’s sometimes a challenge to imagine what the future will look like. But some people are already inventing the way we view it, play with it and share it.

We’ll all become knowledge marketers in one way or another. Sharing, collaborating, conversing, teaching and engaging in creative pursuits.

This video gives a taste of the future for our connected communications and knowledge sharing:

Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

I’ve always been interested in what makes life easier.

Personal and career pursuits have had this life narrative evolve over the years. My first career move was industrial design, then taking up naturopathy, yoga, natural health and new age retailing. Branding and marketing connected all of these and became a new business Brandwithin. A more recent evolution of my story brings education, knowledge marketing and the puzzle of the Internet as a turbo-charged medium for connection and transformation. It’s a fun ride!

Lee Lefever has created another excellent piece on getting the basic idea of social media.

For all the fancy widgets and techniques for blogging, podcasting, linking, bookmarking and more – it comes back to basic principles to get your ideas out to others. The New Internet is about people connecting, sharing their experiences and tapping into the many ‘water cooler’ conversations around us.

This is one of a series from The Common Craft Show that is also featured on The Society For Word of Mouth. (Yes, you can join!) A previous feature of Lee Lefever’s work on this blog is here. You can learn about news blog readers and RSS.

Information overload is not getting any easier. The New York Times reported this week of the tech industry’s self made monster — that delivers us a never ending deluge of emails, cellphone calls and instant messages. These incessant distractions cost America over 650 billion dollars a year in lost productivity.

Is there a solution in sight?

Brandwithin has been working on the Focus and Follow Through project — an online productivity coaching system designed to support you to keep your focus on your highest priorities. This intro coaching video here is a simple knowledge product made using Keynote (the Mac version of PowerPoint) with voice over. And the easy part is the one-click command: send to YouTube…

Stay tuned for future updates and the release of the product. Sanity may yet be a partner to productivity.

There is a wonderful Lavazza coffee lounge in Chicago - and their story is refreshingly different to Starbucks.

Full of life – and the art of coffee – in larger than life pictures, as well as an engaging slide show to inform you of their back story on the ‘real’ coffee… (espresso is never translated, how crema makes the difference to taste…)

How simple it is to tell your story with a few pictures and the story that you know so well.

The Lavazza ‘theme park’ was doing a brisk trade in coffee and related breakfast fare, at the same time as entertaining and informing customers. A great way to build customer loyalty.

There is a usually a captive moment in any business transaction - always a good time to inform, entertain, engage and build the relationship with customers. Lavazza is doing a great job here.

Knowledge marketing with fun and sex appeal!

What could you say to your friends, your family, your co-workers or your clients – if you were running out of time?

This inspiring video reveals an apparently new presentation genre - for university professors to give lectures as if it were their last! And here, one professor participant named Randy Pausch turns out to be truly only weeks or months from dying of pancreatic cancer. His final lecture is called How to Achieve Your Childhood Dreams. Inspiring stuff!

I first saw this on Brad Isaac’s blog.

With the rise in popularity of video on the web, more and more people are consuming massive amounts of ‘content’.

CNN Money article Dawn of the Web Potato reports that ‘web surfing’ is over - and that looking at content takes up 47% of the typical Internet user’s time online.

What are the lessons for knowledge marketers?

• Know your niche - it is easy to find you.
• Speak to your audience about what they are interested in (as my friend and colleague Jon Ward says: “the secret of marketing is simple: it’s not about you.”)
• Find your voice (ahem - i still feel I have training wheels on).
• Distill your message – in this A.D.D. world if you don’t make it simple your customer will do it for you - and it may not be what you want!
• Think Video - and not just with a ‘movie’ camera - even Apple’s new software, Keynote (their answer to PowerPoint) has a direct export function to YouTube! Awesome for making a presentation with slides, moving images, audio, more.
• Share about what your customers love and hate - and what they know and what they don’t
• Beware the curse of assumption: “Oh they’ll already know that” or “They won’t be interested in those details.”
• Have fun - it shows when you are!

When Trump University was launched, the challenge was to give reality to a learning environment that was primarily designed to be online. Enter The Wealth Builder’s Blueprint, the first flagship product for Trump U – to share the stage with Donald Trump.

This home study program has substantial ‘thud’ factor, plus the substance of a complete wealth building system to follow in Trump’s footsteps. But how could it stand out in the media frenzy of lights, cameras and journalists wanting a story straight from the Donald?

The ‘theme park’ was essential to convert the lobby into an environment that could capture the imagination and create a brand experience that left a lasting impression - not to mention the opportunity to profile the product around the world riding on the media’s coverage.

Essential ingredients for a knowledge theme park:

• Create a color palette to set the stage for the brand (colored table cloths can work well)
• Merchandise with multiple product samples (an old department store trick: stack them high – watch them fly!)
• Display messages that inspire and evoke curiosity - an open mind is essential to get someone to take action
• Build the browsing experience - create a mini fantasy adventure with lots to explore
• Engage your audience with multiple senses

And now with the ever-increasing expectations for a complete online experience, these same principles can be applied in a website to create a virtual knowledge marketing theme park.

This remarkably simple presentation shows just how connections on the web are developing. Even though we are a few years down the RSS track – we’re still probably in the ‘early adopter’ phase.

I was fascinated to watch as the crowd grew larger around what seemed to be a simple ‘make-up-makeover’.
Then I figured it out - the makeup artist was generously sharing his knowledge about how he was creating the ultimate dream – so all the women who watched and asked questions could understand how they could live the dream too.

This Dior guy understood the power of Knowledge Marketing!