Brian Pittman's spotlight this week: Mike Moran, Author, "Do It Wrong Quickly"

"The key is realizing you can't hit home runs all the time," says Mike Moran, the prolific IBM engineer and "Biznology" blogger whose new book Do It Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules advocates failure—"doing it wrong"—as a necessary step on the road to success in the new Web 2.0 paradigm.

"You don't have to be brilliant, just persistent. Keep trying and you will figure it out," he elaborates, underscoring the book's premise that yesteryear's "plan then execute" approach no longer flies in today's rapidly changing communications landscape. What's instead needed is a non-stop "cycle of refinement" approach—one that not only accepts failure, but which embraces and seeks it out.

Bold, counterintuitive ideas are nothing new for Moran: With over 20 years experience in search and Web technologies, he co-authored Search Engine Marketing, Inc.: Driving Search Traffic to Your Company's Web Site and is a member of the Direct Marketing Association's Search Engine Marketing Council, as well as a charter member of its Interactive Marketing Advisory Board. Put simply, his Internet marketing expertise is considerable—and has made him a highly sought after advisor on all things Web 2.0 and beyond. See why here:

What exactly does a "Do It Wrong Quickly" company culture look like?

When I say, "Do It Wrong Quickly"—it's a facetious title. I don't really want you to do it wrong. The idea is to admit that most of what you're doing may be wrong. Look at the typical cultures we grew up in: Everything comes down to "doing it right" the first time. That's a pretty big order and it stops people from being creative. It drives out all show stoppers. We get mired in approvals for all things possible and end up in numerous meetings trying to achieve the dreaded consensus. Everybody becomes afraid to do something until somebody else agrees with them.

Even then, you can still be surprised by the customers' response. After all, you've gone through the whole process of getting everybody on board before you deliver the goods. You don't want to hear that it's wrong. You can't afford for it to be wrong. So you don't listen the market. You hear only the feedback you want: proof that everything is OK.

What's the alternative to that traditional model then?

I am suggesting that the really successful companies are doing the exact opposite. They spend a week on an idea and put it out there immediately. For example, maybe they send it out as a podcast to only five percent of their list. They create it quick and get it out there to test it live. They don't wait for somebody to slam it down or tweak it or present a better plan or ask what their competitors are doing. They just do it and the market makes it right as they go by giving live feedback.

Here's an example: Amazon has its shopping cart on the right hand side of the screen. How did they decide that? Well, half the people at the company thought it should be on the left. They couldn't compromise and put it in the middle. That's what's bad about consensus. It results in the least best-case scenario. So they just put it out there on the left and tracked sales. Then they moved it to the right. They found they got one percent more sales on the right side. Now lots of companies have it there. Customers are used to it. So they created a standard because they got out there, did it and tested it live with the market. They didn't bury it in some leadership committee.

What are some first steps—what can readers do now to implement your advice?

You could do this with anything. Put a paid search ad up, for example. Test it quick for a few hours and then dump the rocks. When you do that you can pay attention to what works and what doesn't. Constantly change and try things on the fly. Failure's part of the process. In fact, the process depends on it. That's the key. Really successful companies have figured it out. They keep trying stuff and customers guide them in an instant feedback loop. That's the whole concept of Web 2.0: Listen to what your customers are saying and watch what they're doing online.

What do you mean by "listening"—how does it apply to a Web 2.0 world?

A starting point is knowing who is blogging about you, for example. If you put out your message and there's an eruption online about what you're doing—then you have to engage. That's really hard for PR and marcom types. Here's why: Mystery and mystique surrounded the whole practice of PR in the past. It's like PR people were the high priests who knew how to communicate in public and get messages out. This used to work in the past because not everybody had a printed press or way to reach or engage with the public. Competitors could say things that disagreed with you, but you basically had to respond through the medium of the press. Not anymore. Now, you still need to respond—and the old stuff doesn't go away, like the media in general—but there's new stuff added, including blogs.

Can you think of an example of a brand "listening" to an influential blog this way?

There's a blog about Netflix called "Hacking Netflix." It has over one million unique subscribers and every one of them is a Netflix customer. When Netflix released their download service to compete with Blockbuster, they invited five media people to come see the preview and one of them was this blogger. They told me this guy was more important to them than The New York Times or Forbes. Why? If they got a good review, they would have thousands of customers trying it because he cares and is passionate about this. He cares more than your typical beat reporter would. Netflix realizes this. But a lot of other companies don't. They don't get how bloggers are different from reporters, and they don't know how or even why they should be engaging with them.

Let's back up—how do you think bloggers differ from traditional reporters?

Reporters are always looking for a story. It's often adversarial. Bloggers are typically—or can be—fans of your product. The Netflix blogger is a fan of their service, despite the title of the blog. Bloggers also care about what they're posting. It's about passion, not profit. If they're blogging about your brand, it's because they're passionate about it and your market. But they'll also take you to task. They can be your biggest fans—if you treat them right.

Your tips for treating bloggers right?

Give them the same respect you give reporters. The Netflix blogger, for example, told me he has the cell phone number of the PR person at Netflix. He called to fact check a post and the guy called back from Singapore. He immediately included the company's comment on the story. PR people already know how to do that—the "relations" part of the job. You just have to decide to do it for non-traditional media, as well.

Also realize that in traditional media, some different person will be covering you or your beat year to year. Bloggers don't always consider themselves to be professional communicators. They're aficionados about certain subjects and that's why the mainstream media follows them. They're basically researchers for mainstream media. If you recognize that, then you will prioritize them on media lists. These guys influence mainstream coverage, which can be good for you as long as you: Treat them the same you would a reporter, always tell the truth and be transparent, give them access and provide them with information their readers will care about.

How should PR folks first engage with bloggers?

In the same way you research readers of a publication before pitching the editor, you need to see who is commenting on blogs. Who are their readers? Look at the comments—and then become part of the conversation there. Don't be afraid to step in and say something. If, for example, a blogger writes a story that is inaccurate—then comment and set it straight. Be honest about who you are and be confident about your ability to conduct yourself professionally. Don't get defensive or pushy. This is all stuff PR people already know about mainstream media. Just apply it online without getting lost in the technicalities.

But engagement has to go beyond the PR person. These days, you need to train and empower your employees to operate in public forums like blogs as extension of your marketing and PR. You can't be everywhere and on every blog and online forum. But your staff actually becomes part of these communities. If someone has a problem in a forum, for example, they help. Your people are probably in these communities building or commenting on the brand. Get in there. Empower them to be brand ambassadors.

That's a tall order—many in PR are afraid of losing control of the message.

My response is there's no reason to fear the loss of message control. It's already happened. It's gone. In fact, I'm not sure if PR ever controlled the message. You could not control WOM, for example. You just couldn't see it. Now you can. Web 2.0 is that transparent. It's online, not in the street. Just search for your brand on Google and now days you'll see "YourDomainSucks.com." You'll see a compelling message people are paying attention to and it won't be something you wrote. So these are end of days for message control. That doesn't mean you can't try to put your company in its best light by getting out there and engaging these communities—but you just can't count on traditional media and PR to get your message out. Now it's all these other avenues, including an angry customer posting your voice message online. So the tip here is to stop trying to control. Instead, participate.

Who is doing this right—or, better, who is doing it "wrong quickly"?

I like what Sun Microsystems is doing. They have tens of thousands of employees writing blogs. They also let customers rate and review their products. This is a real act of bravery for a manufacturer because if you don't like what you're selling, then folks just go over to your competitor. But when companies actually put up customer ratings and reviews, they find their sales go up 20 to 30 percent.

I asked a head of Sun products why they do this. They said the customers will look for that information elsewhere, so they might as well keep them in their environment. He was talking about their plans for putting RSS feeds to blogs about Sun on their site as a newsfeed about all things said about Sun—and none of it would be "controlled." This goes back to being willing to jump in and risk "doing it wrong"—and it also goes back to actually listening to your customers online.

What are some of the other benefits of listening to your customers online?

Generally speaking, anything you can do to open up feedback will: give you information about your customer that you never had before, which will help you understand them better and pitch more appropriate messages. It will also help you convey an aura of openness that helps with brand loyalty. Also, this can help you determine problems and improvements with your product line and positively impact product development. The loyalty effect of all of this is pretty significant. This translates to real life and is measurable in terms of sales or company objectives. The cool thing about the Web in all of this is that you can bring in DM rules to measure exactly what people are doing through your site and how it's impacting things like leads and sales.

Who is doing a really bad job applying these concepts to engage publics online?

I think the people who are doing it horribly wrong are the ones who believe it's business as usual and that none of this new stuff matters. I run into them a lot. You go to their websites and you can see they believe the most important thing is to see a commercial or product billboard. If you go to a site for a company that has been in the news lately for a controversy and you don't find mention of it anywhere—that's an example of someone who doesn't get it. Those things are back to days where we thought we could control the message.

The new rule of PR and marketing is this: It's as important now to pay attention as it is to get attention. If you're ignoring feedback and open channels and not engaging in it—you're dead. That's when hate sites and online movements about how you suck crop up. The Web gives people the power. Not you.

What is PR's role in "new marketing"—who owns it?

PR's role is to teach the rest of the company how to operate in public, how to communicate the best way and to think about how audiences will receive what they say. It's about bringing back the public's perception of the company to drive the company's behavior. That's the loop.

But beyond that, I don't think anybody should be concerned about "owning it." That smacks of specialist's disease. It's people feeling they have more of an allegiance to their professional discipline than they do to the company that pays them. The problem is we reward specialties to an extent we didn't in past. The usual script goes like this: The way to advancement is to get certification in something, to be recognized by a professional society and so on. Those things are considered tickets to success.

There's nothing wrong with that in context, but when people forget about the good of the company because their advice is framed solely from their professional standing or background—then you get big companies with all these cross functional teams arguing with each other. What they really need to be thinking about is what it all means to the customer. Everything needs to be: customer POV. Who cares if PR owns it? Care about getting answers to customer questions, fixing the product and so on. If the PR department owns the Web and Web 2.0 at your company—then great. If not, get over it and pitch in.

There's no real way to carve it up nicely. So don't worry about how to get cross functional teams in place. Instead, put cross functional people in place—people with programming and some communications skills. The answer to this whole conundrum lies in looking outside your typical professional boundaries. They're old world. Your role is to be the public advocate for the company and that has few boundaries.

How does that relate to "doing it wrong quickly"?

No more arguing with disciplines and everybody agreeing on the lowest common denominator, please. Instead, just try stuff for the sake of the customer. Test those things on the fly and learn what the best practice is beyond some lame industry generality. Really, there's no such a thing as a "best practice." That gets people hung up. The only best practice out there is the one that is specific to your customers and your company. You can now find these tailored practices out quickly by trying and retooling new online ideas as you go.

What holds people back from embracing this "just do it" mindset?

The inability to adapt and change closely held beliefs. Another roadblock here is people now allowing themselves to make mistakes and realizing it's just part of the process. That can be hard for bosses, especially ego-driven and controlling ones. Some people just won't be able to make this transition into the new market because they won't let go. Another roadblock to this more open mindset is hiding inside professional disciplines and behind "best practices" or "plan" this and "plan" that.

These things are insidious. You only find out best practices after the fact, and the right "business plan" only happens when you take action first and then adjust it later. That's what's so nice about the Web: It allows you to be able to "do it wrong" and adjust without incurring great costs in terms of time and money. In the past, you couldn't do that. If something like a big print campaign didn't work and embarrassed the company, you were fired. Now, you just pull it off the site. Make a quick adjustment. Move on. It's all about adaptability.

Your parting words of advice for PR readers?

PR people know how to tell a story. It used to be that the only place you could do that was through an editor. Not anymore. Web 2.0 is a free printing press. Use it to get your story out. Get people to participate and pass it along. That's a new focus for PR in the new media age, but it builds on a skill you always had. It's why you went into this field. It's what blows your skirt up. That hasn't changed, so stop limiting yourself to old channels and ways of thinking. Share your company or client's story with employees and others, and use Web 2.0 to let others tell your story for you. That's its power and it's where all of this meets the practice of PR.