UNDERSTANDING THE PINTEREST PHENOMENON—Part 2

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

So, have you had a chance to check out Pinterest? If you’re like a lot people, maybe you got sucked in and spent more time on the site than you intended!

To finish up the discussion we started last week, I’ll restate the question that I left unanswered:

How can the Pinterest insights be used in your business?

First, I’m not suggesting that your company establish a Pinterest account and start trying to use this avenue to accomplish various business objectives (marketing, recruiting, band building, etc.). Instead, I’m proposing that we try to learn from their methodologies.

I know that most real estate companies are already participating in various social networking initiatives. Much of the involvement is early stage and there is much to learn as we all try to make these venues produce results. So, what has Pinterest figured out, and how can you apply some of the lessons to your social networking efforts?

Here are some ideas that came to mind as I pondered this question.

1. There is a difference between congregating around interest and congregating around relationship.

Pinterest teaches us that there can be an appropriate (and sometimes necessary) separation between my interests and my relationships. The personal nature of information that I share with family and friends is not interesting to most people.

People seem to open up a little more on-line when they are communicating about their interests. In doing so, there is more diversity in the types of people who can connect around a topic of shared interest.

2. Business more naturally connects with interest.

You’ve probably heard the old saying: People hate to be sold, but love to buy. When there is a common interest that a group of people congregate around, it is natural for people to talk about the products and services they use to support that interest.

However, it’s usually awkward to first have a relationship with someone based on a personal connection (ex. alumni of the same high school), and then have a conversation about a product or service. I’m not saying that this never happens, but it quickly raises on-line privacy concerns for most people; Many people feel that a relational interest is being contrived for a business objective.

3. People are drawn to pictures.

Pinterest didn’t discover this phenomenon, but they’ve certainly mastered its application. There is something magnetic about an interesting picture.

For example, one of my business partners has a 24-year old daughter who lives in New York City and works for a publishing company. Now, I’m not overly interested in the publishing industry or the daily life of a young female who lives on the other side of the country. But, this young woman takes incredible pictures.

She writes a blog about what she calls her wonderful adventure in New York City. My wife and I will occasionally pop on her blog with the purpose of seeing what cool pictures Heather has posted this week. There is something very captivating about a person who has a passion and captures it with pictures.

4. Facebook and Twitter may get you where you want to go.

There is a bunch of discussion among real estate companies in the last year or so about using Facebook and Twitter as avenues for promoting business interests. The thought is that they are the largest and most prominent social networks, so it only makes sense to attempt to leverage their large membership bases.

Pinterest may be teaching us something different—it is a social networking site that does just one thing really well. For many real estate companies, it may be worth considering this idea as well.

Can you really successfully compete in the Facebook arena, or would it make more sense to consider some less prominent social networking sites, or even create your own network? For example, the music industry has largely benefited from the second of these options.

Bottom line: There is a lot left to learn when it comes to on-line social networking. When a site like Pinterest scores a huge hit, it’s worth paying attention and trying to figure out what they’ve discovered.

Editor's Note: This article was written by Ben Hess. Ben is the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Understanding the Pinterest Phenomenon

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Have you spent any time on Pinterest yet? If not, you probably will soon. Pinterest is one of the fastest growing websites on the internet this year, hosting more than 11 million unique visitors per month.

What is Pinterest? It is a site where members post pictures, images, and artwork on topics that are of interest to them. The name is intended to conjure up a cork pin board where you might post a collage of pictures you find interesting and significant.

Now, imagine you can look at other people’s pin boards, copy images of the interesting things you find on your own board (re-pin), and comment on the things that others have posted. Similar to Google, you can search for images, but instead of just getting a long array of sterile images, each image has a person and comments attached to it.

Here is the question I’d like to consider today: Why did Pinterest suddenly (it was founded in 2008) get wildly popular? What bit of the human existence did the founders of this site discover and successfully tap? And, how can the same ideas be used to make your business more popular?

For some help on this topic, we’ll turn to Dr. Christopher Long and an interview he recently did with Fast Company. Dr. Long makes these observations:

1. Pinterest has mastered the art of sharing. Like Facebook, Pinterest relies on people generating content that interests other users. So, once a critical mass of people comment and re-pin, it reinforces others to generate content.

So what’s different? Pinterest boards are like its users’ personal happiness collages. They represent things that they appreciate, desire, and that express who they are…whether the things are cupcakes, shirtless David Beckham, or an inspirational quotation.

In an ironic way, Long says, this frees many people to be more public about who they really are and who they want to be, because it’s less focused on the kind of personal content that sets off privacy and security alarms.

Dr. Long concludes, “Pinterest is a place where we can demonstrate: ‘If it weren’t for all those mundane things that I do that I post on Facebook, this is what I would be doing and consuming. Here is my real self.’”

2. Pinterest has figured out how to integrate business (brand) interests with personal interests. Facebook has notoriously struggled with the integration of business life and personal life. But Pinterest makes the transition with surprising success—it is currently driving more referral traffic (someone clicks on something in Pinterest that takes them to another, usually commercial, site) than YouTube, LinkedIn, Google, and Reddit…combined.

“Pinterest boards are essentially collections of 'Likes,' the expectation is that users curate these more carefully than they may curate their Facebook Likes. When I pin or re-pin something related to a brand, I am saying that I care about this content enough that I want to hold onto it or that I want to show other people that it is important.

[As people tell me about the things they love], I don’t feel like I’m being sold anything directly, even though each pin will eventually take me to the source. I feel like a service is being provided for me to totally enjoy something that I am passionate about and find images I didn’t know existed."

So, we’ve answered my first two challenge questions…how about the last one: How can these insights be used in your business?

I believe every local real estate office has the opportunity to connect with the citizens and businesses in their area, due to their physical location within the community they serve. And, this need is being largely unmet.

In our next discussion, we’ll explore this idea in more detail. In the meantime, check out Pinterest and tell me what you think of it!

Fear of Change

Monday, March 12, 2012

Here is a great quote I came across today:

"Change has a considerable psychological impact on the human mind. To the fearful it is threatening because it means that things may get worse. To the hopeful it is encouraging because things may get better. To the confident it is inspiring because the challenge exists to make things better." King Whitney Jr.

Have you ever thought about how fundamental “change” is in your recruiting pursuits? I submit that many of the people in your pipeline are fearful of change, at least as it pertains to their career. Addressing those fears during your dialog may help you in your efforts to develop authentic relationships.

Anyone whom you wish to onboard will be facing a change, either the minor change of switching companies, or the major change of pursuing a completely new career. How you address that with them will make all the difference in your recruiting success.

Jorge Barba, a self-professed “Innovation Insurgent,” made this observation in a recent blog he authored:

“When employees do not feel understood, they resist change more fiercely. But when they are included in the decision-making process and treated as valued resources, they can be the staunchest champions of new initiatives.”

This statement is certainly valid in terms of managing your existing employees, but let me re-frame it relative to recruiting…

As a hiring manager, you have a tough job. You’re tasked with helping a person come to the realization that their current job circumstances are mediocre or poor. And, to fix the situation, they are going to have to overcome their fear of change and envision something better for the future.

The key to handling this discussion well, starts early. Reread the above quote. When do people stop resisting? When they see themselves included in the decision making process.

How do you get a candidate involved in this process? The first step is to truly understand the person’s fears. We all want to be understood in general, and that is certainly something you should strive to do and demonstrate, but taking it a step further and addressing and empathizing with one’s fear of change is important too.

Once you have conveyed an understanding of their feelings around change, you can begin the conversation about how they can empower themselves to improve their situation. This conversation does not start with what you can do for them, but rather listening to their ideas about what they think would help them get to a better place with their career.

In doing so, you will begin to move the conversation away from fear and towards hope. Wouldn’t it be nice to be the catalyst for that conversion?

Editor's Note: Lee Gray is the Senior Account Manager at Tidemark Inc. Lee is a guest contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Another “Awesome” Blog

Wednesday, March 07, 2012

I just received an email from my truly "awesome" 77 year-old Dad who, over the years in his teaching graduate business students, has witnessed a dramatic increase and overuse of the word "awesome." They have, in his observation, used the word so frequently in speech and writing, that it has lost its original meaning.

How tired are you of the word "awesome?"

Although I infrequently use the word, I'm embarrassed to tell you that I probably am guilty of its overuse and its misapplication…and I'm almost 52 years old. I seem to recall the overuse of the word having its roots in my vocabulary around the year 1978…just prior to the debut of Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I was graduating high school and remember a friend using this word to describe nearly every experience he encountered. He was an avid skier, but had he lived in Southern California, he would have been a surfer– if you get my drift?

In a search on the internet, I found a long list of efforts dedicated to banning the word. Because the number of people who are becoming offended by the overuse is growing, it might be helpful to strongly encourage your agents and those who represent your company to actively monitor their own vocabulary, for proper usage.

My dad (who has been a well respected professor and favorite among students) is about to retire from teaching. Here is a one page handout that my dad is distributing to his last class of graduate students:

Optional Words for “Awesome”

(You must learn to speak & write correctly.)

One of the most overused and incorrectly used words today is “awesome.”

The dictionary definition of “awesome” is: “Overwhelmingly grand, breathtaking, astounding.” Therefore, “awesome” is a suitable word to describe the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls. You might also say that these scenes are awe-inspiring.

Expand your vocabulary. Rather than use the word “awesome” incorrectly, try using some of the “optional words” or other similar words listed below as more suitable to describe your feeling or observation about an object, person, or occurrence.

OPTIONAL WORD

MEANING & Other Similar Words

Incredible: –Hard to believe, astonishing, amazing

Fantastic: –Expressing pleasure at something incredible

Extraordinary: –Unusually excellent or strange

Magnificent: –Unusually beautiful, superb, exceptional

Unprecedented: -Unparalleled, a record, a first time, unique

Phenomenal: -Perceived by your senses as remarkable, unusual, or rare

Unique: -Only one of a kind, special, exclusive, distinctive

Wonderful: –Exceedingly pleasing, outstanding

Miraculous: -Regarded as caused by supernatural intervention, astonishing, unbelievable, and marvelous

Fabulous: –Typical of fables, tremendously wonderful, marvelous, or great

OK Dad. You've convinced me. I will, from this day forward, stop over-using the word "awesome." But, instead of using any of the words from this list…..I think I'll reintroduce the word "swell."

Editor's Note: This article was written by Dr. David Mashburn. Dave is a Clinical and Consulting Psychologist, a Partner at Tidemark, Inc. and a regular contributor to WorkPuzzle. Comments or questions are welcome. If you're an email subscriber, reply to this WorkPuzzle email. If you read the blog directly from the web, you can click the "comments" link below.

Why Do People Leave Your Office? Lessons From Google

Monday, March 05, 2012

Take a minute to envision your dream job and the organization in which you’d most like to work. Maybe some of you had Google float through your head during this exercise. The extravagant nature of the Google workplace has been well-publicized over the last few years.

In case you missed it, here is a little intro from Google’s career site:

“We provide a standard package of fringe benefits, but on top of that are first-class dining facilities, gyms, laundry rooms, massage rooms, haircuts, car washes, dry cleaning, commuting buses – just about anything a hardworking employee might want. Let’s face it: programmers want to program, they don’t want to do their laundry. So we make it easy for them to do both.”

What’s included in that “standard package of fringe benefits,” you might ask? I won’t republish the whole list (it is quite long), but here are a few things Google considers standard:

A full 12 weeks of paid maternity leave for Mom and/or seven weeks of paid paternity leave for Dad. Stressed out when you bring the baby home? No worries — Google will pay for $500 worth of take-out food so you don’t have to cook.
Want to go back to school? No problem. Google will pay up to $12,000 per year for education expenses.
Want to adopt a child? Great. Google will pick up the first $5,000 worth of adoption expenses. And yes, you still get all the maternity and paternity benefits.

Here is a complete list is you care to read more: http://www.google.com/jobs/lifeatgoogle/benefits/

I think it is safe to say there is no real estate company on the planet who could match these types of benefits.

So, here is an important question to consider: If an individual worked in such a great environment, why would he/she leave?

Some light research was recently conducted on this question by Matt Lynley at Business Insider, and I think the results might surprise you. Here is some of what Lynley reported:

“People leave Google because…

1. They are not part of the ‘well-respected’ group. If you aren't an engineer, get ready to be below everyone else. At most companies, it's the product manager who's more valuable than the engineer. At Google, engineers get the final say in just about everything. That leaves designers, ad operatives and just about everyone else in the dust.

2. They are bored and want something new. Sometimes, it's time to move on. Two former Google employees we spoke with said they had been at Google for an extended period of time and wanted to try something new. A lot of them move on to new companies.

3. Feel disconnected and not part of a team they enjoy. If you're at a satellite office, you might feel disconnected. The former Google Wave Team left because they felt like they weren't getting their say. One former Googler said that New York wasn't really a satellite office, but just about everything else was. You have to make your presence felt in Mountain View if you want to have a say in the company.

4. Some are feeling the entrepreneurial itch. Chris Dixon tweeted just a short while ago some Google diaspora: Ev Williams, who founded Twitter; Kevin Systrom, who founded Instagram; Dennis Crowley, who founded Foursquare; and Ben Silbermann, who founded Pinterest. One former Googler we spoke to did just that, and got a nice acquisition deal out of it.

5. They want to diversify their experience. Facebook is the largest company where former Google employees end up. Seriously — who wouldn't want Facebook, Google, and Microsoft all on their resume? One former Googler we spoke with said this was a huge draw."

As Dave Mashburn wrote earlier this month (Why Money isn’t the Right Incentive), money is often not the primary reason people leave their job. Now, as Google alumni have shown us, the same rings true about benefits.

As a real estate manager responsible for hiring and retaining agents, I’m sure this is hard to believe. Most discussions you have on both ends of the spectrum (hiring or retaining) center on splits and benefits.

While you’ll always have to deal with the money issue, don’t make it the center of your discussions. Instead, focus on the reality of the human condition that the Google research teaches:

Human beings have an insatiable capacity for dissatisfaction.

Become an expert at detecting dissatisfaction. Everyone has some. Once identified, spend time helping individuals relieve that dissatisfaction.

Recruiting and the Dignity of Work

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

While watching my favorite news show, 60 Minutes, last Sunday, tears came to my eyes as I witnessed a remarkable story, detailing the importance of work to our fellow humans.

It was a story of a non-profit organization's attempt to help those who have been unemployed for more than two years, build tangible hope in finding a job, and ultimately place them with great success. I won't go into the details of the program, but the primary take-away was the remarkable importance work plays in the general dignity of people.

The carnage of emotional devastation discussed among the initial meetings held by a new class of the unemployed became even more profound when, as a viewer, you were led on their journey through training, internship, and finally productive work.

The graduates of the program literally cried at the awareness of how “wonderful” it was to hear their alarm clock go off, announcing that it was their time to prepare to go to work.

At the heels of watching this dramatic story, a friend of mine told me of his story of having just visited Madagascar as a part of an organization restoring the mangrove trees along the barren coast of their waterways (to restore the animal life), by employing villagers to replant and protect their growth. As a result of these endeavors, the villagers are now able to buy supplies for fishing, pay off their debts, and make a living.

One villager, who invited my friend into his hut (containing six family members) for dinner, boasted with pride that, because of his newfound “success,” he has “enough rice to last one dry season.” He went on to say that, as a result, he is “truly content.”

There are several lessons here with regard to recruiting, not to mention our general work life, in both of these stories. For one, you should never fail to remember that those you interview might be carrying a great deal of emotional baggage (loss of dignity), if they’re coming to you from the pool of unemployed. Whatever your decision regarding their suitability for your company, be mindful to treat them with respect, and not further demoralize them or treat them with contempt. (Although…I’m sure that there are some among these ranks who don't want to do any work, and want it to just come to them—That’s a separate subject for another blog.)

The other lesson is very clear: We must actively look for ways to challenge those around us to never lose sight of the privilege of work. Not everyone gets to do it. And yet, it is an essential piece of the very fabric from which we are made. God says that we are made in his Image. This is the same God that created and sustains this incredible Universe. It’s no wonder that tears come to our eyes regarding these stories of productivity. The meaning and purpose run incredibly deep.

How often do we become ungrateful for our work? What impact does this tendency have on our company’s culture, or on our company’s reputation, or on our productivity? Is there a way to keep our pulse on our team members' enjoyment and appreciation of work?