The Value of Data

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.

- Thich Nhat Hanh
Call Me By My True Names: The Collected Poems, Parallax Press, August 9, 2001

I’m sure they still make them in some form, but do you remember being on vacation as a kid and seeing the whole rack of personalized tchotchkes? Especially license plates from whatever state you were visiting? There was never a “Clay.” And I looked every single time. 

Dale Carnegie said it best, “Remember that a person's name is to that person, the sweetest and most important sound in any language.” Get somebody’s name wrong and, boy, you’ve got a lot of recovery to do. You might have the best pitch, the best story, the most incredible product, but use somebody’s name wrong, and you’ve lost any credibility you had.

Clay isn’t a hard name. And it’s not THAT unusual, but you’d be surprised at the permutations I get – Clark, Craig, Chris, Clag . . . yes, somebody called me Clag. Because Clag is in much more common parlance than Clay. I’m still upset about that one.

Marketing, sales, and my field fundraising are really about persuasion. It’s about talking to people about their values, their identity, who they are, and encouraging—asking them—to make a commitment to something that really fits their identity as a human. It may be a product, or it may be, again in fundraising, a life-saving, world-changing mission.

But to truly get to people’s values . . . to their own personal brand . . . we have to appeal to them as a person. And if we get their name wrong, we have invalidated their identity right from the outset.

It’s why I’m passionate about data.

Data is the single greatest asset any nonprofit—well, ANY organization—can have. Our donors and our customers are everything. Without them, we don’t exist.  And if we can’t reach them and engage them in dialogue, conversation, and messaging, we become, as Shakespeare wrote, “Full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” And all contact begins with data:

• Name fields

• Address information

• Email address

• Phone number

• Spouse name

The quality of the data we have and use has, in my experience, the greatest impact on our ability to reach and engage with people. Our donors. Our customers. 

And yet the management and maintenance—indeed, the prioritization of data quality—is often hefted off or outsourced, and we don’t pay that close attention to it. Because it’s a numbers game sometimes, isn’t it? We’re not terribly worried (too much) if our email didn’t reach all intended recipients or the mail piece didn’t reach the intended homes, because we got other responses.

But somewhere in that big file of data was a Clay looking for his name on a license plate. And we called him Crag. And he thought, “You don’t know me at all.” Our audiences are begging us to call them by their true names. To show them we know them and that they’re valuable to us – and we’re valuable to them. The value of clean data cannot be over or underestimated.

T. Clay Buck, CFRE is the chief development officer at Nevada Blind Children’s Foundation. You can find him online at @TClayBuck or tcbfundraising.com.

Decluttering Your Advertising

We have reached a tipping point after being constantly bombarded with emails, texts, news, and information buzzing our phones, computers, and TVs. We, as consumers, are spread as thin as ever when it comes to paying attention. It is hard for one to concentrate with all this visual and audible clutter. In the era of the Marie Kondo method of decluttering our homes, we also need to declutter our advertising so that the viewer pays attention.

As a designer, it is my job to coach clients to be part of the decluttering solution. A consumer can be dissuaded to do business with a company based upon their advertising. When a message is too loud, wordy, busy, and confusing, a potential customer will walk away. People don’t have time to figure out what you’re trying to say, so it needs to be concise.

Step 1: Clear Content

Consumers want to know information fast. You are competing for their time, battling against all the other noise. Tell them who you are, what you stand for, and how you can you make their lives easier. Your messaging must have direction to entice the potential buyer.

Step 2: Less Talk

I find a lot of clients feel compelled to over-explain. Hiring a copywriter can help you create clear and concise messaging. Consumers don’t want to get into the minutia of your product; they want the basics and will seek out more information if it applies to them. Simplify your message by presenting the problem and the solution as briefly as possible. You want to give the consumer direction to gather more information from your website. Clients and potential buyers today are resourceful—they will find you if they’re interested.

Step 3: Bold Design

Fortunately for advertisers, good design doesn’t always mean expensive design. Marketers don’t need to break the bank on photography. All it means is that your advertising needs to be visually interesting. If a photo is applicable and striking, by all means, use it. But, do not underestimate the strength of simple typography and the importance of white space, as it can provide the break in the noise that consumers need. With graphic use of color, line, text, and shape, you can create a stunning design that is more than affordable.

When you tie clear messaging together with bold design, you present your customer the most concise, decluttered version of your company. It will attract and keep clientele, which is the big goal for any advertising campaign.

Addie Mirabella is the owner of Mirabella Design Studio.

The Digital Intersection of Personal and Professional Brands

Recently, the topic I’ve been asked to speak on most is the intersection of professional and personal brand in social media spaces. I believe I’m uniquely equipped to discuss this topic as I straddle two generations: depending on what year is used to define the break, I’m either the youngest Gen Xer out there or the oldest Millennial in existence. And what a blessing to identify with both! 

My Gen X brethren were the last generation taught not to mix business with personal. This generation was told “don’t be friends with the people you work with,” “don’t share too much of your personal life,” and my very favorite, “leave home at the door when you walk into the office.”

When it comes to social media, Gen Xers tend to share all work or all personal, but not often both. Some go so far as to have separate accounts for their personal connections and professional networks. However, in today’s world, our networks have blended. The person we connect with on Instagram because we share a passion for yoga might lead to that next professional opportunity. By trying to keep these aspects of ourselves separate, we’re likely missing out on valuable, meaningful connections.

Speaking from my Millennial perspective, many Millennials don’t even see a distinction between personal and professional brand. As the ‘YOLO’ generation, they question everything and want people to accept them exactly how they are. Millennials gravitate to those people, communities, and businesses who embrace the diversity and ‘live life for today’ ethos that defines them. Millennials have been known to overshare, over-post, and over-expose themselves on social channels.

So how do we, no matter our generational alignment, embrace our professional and personal brands, while not exposing every aspect of our life in the digital sphere? It takes thought, intention, and practice.

I’m going to be honest, up until about three years ago, I was one of those people who thought I could separate work and personal. By day I’m an administrator for executive education programming at a state university’s business school. In my free time, I am a competitive ballroom dancer, foodie, and global traveler. How in the world could these two sides of my brand ever align online? 

At first, I decided to keep my Facebook page as a personal space, only accepting friend requests from people who were somehow related to my personal brand. LinkedIn was my space for professional connections. But what happened when my professional connections wanted to connect on Facebook? Ignore them? I knew that couldn’t possibly be good for business. I scrapped the personal page and started a new one, only posting about business and higher education…no one really needed to know about that other stuff anyway. That lasted about a year. I found little value personally from my digital connections, and by the lack of meaningful interactions on my page, my connections weren’t seeing much value from me either.

It was only when I stopped trying to separate myself in digital spaces that I saw a boost in both my personal and professional brands. First, I put thought into what I was trying to accomplish with my digital channels. My first goal was to stay connected and cultivate professional and personal relationships. In many cases, there was an overlap—and that was perfectly acceptable! I didn’t have to leave “home at the door” when I entered a digital space. My second goal was to share about my dancing, travels, and food experiences with anyone who was interested.    

I considered the social channels that would best help me accomplish these goals and created profiles that would further define my purpose for being on that channel. (Think mini-mission statements for social channels.) 

LinkedIn: A purely business/education-focused channel. This is the space I dedicate to my career and conversations that are valuable in that area of my life.

Profile:  “As an education and business professional with many years of experience in offering thoughtful and effective contributions across diverse industries, my goal is to create opportunities to support the growth and achievement of all individuals that I have the pleasure of working with.”

Instagram: My passion-driven platform. It is a public account; as I stated, I want to share and connect with anyone who's interested.

Profile:  “I dance. I travel. I eat. Passions are everything.”

Facebook: A space where the overlap happens. I share highlights about higher education, business, dance, travel, and food.

Profile: “Higher-ed enthusiast. Ballroom dancer. Foodie. Full of wanderlust and zeal for experiencing life.”

Now that I had put some thought into my social platforms, I was ready for the second step in my process, intention. When I have something to share, I take a step back and think about where it is most appropriate to post. There is intention behind every post I make. For example, I recently won Administrative Staff of the Year for my college. I posted this accolade on LinkedIn and Facebook, but not Instagram. It wouldn’t resonate with my followers on Instagram, many of whom I don’t know personally and who connected with me because we share an affinity for things outside of business.

Finally, practice. In reality, I don’t LOVE social media. I truly want to live in the moment, but I have consciously made a choice to represent myself in various ways with intention, and I must practice it.  Not daily, but regularly. Enough to stay in the conversation. Enough to learn about what’s important to others in my network. Enough to be engaged. 

Once I started implementing thought, intention, and practice into my social channels, I found my conversations both on and offline became richer and more interconnected. People who were part of my “business” network were interested in ballroom dancing, and we were able to have deeper conversations at a networking event; I might have even introduced a few to a dance studio so they could take lessons after a busy day at the office. I also quickly learned that I might be able to support people on my personal side, as many of them aspired to attain additional education at the university. Had I kept these worlds separate, I would never have had these moments of beautiful cross-pollination.  

My method isn’t perfect, but, as a busy professional with a variety of interests, focusing my social conversations through thought, intention, and regular practice has strongly shaped my personal and professional brands and benefited all my relationships, on and offline.

Nikkole Liesse is the Executive Director of UNLV Lee Business School Office of Online and Executive Education.