One of the most important principles of marketing is persistence.  Every marketer I’ve ever worked with has said that a target has to be exposed to your message at least six times before it sinks in.

At first, I wasn’t certain if I believed them.  After all, six times seems kind of arbitrary, and I never saw any scholarly research to back it up (I am so ancient that this was actually in the pre-Google days, and you had to go to the library to look anything up).

Yet as the years went by and I heard it from more and more people, I came to accept it…which just illustrates the power of this homely rule.

But there are also some important implications to this rule that most people forget, especially in this age of instant gratification.

If it takes six impressions to make an impact, the relationship between marketing and results is non-linear.  In a linear world, buying 1 week of ads would drive 10% awareness, 2 weeks 20%, and so on.  Here’s a quick table for emphasis:

Week 1: 10%
Week 2: 20%
Week 3: 30%
Week 4: 40%
Week 5: 50%
Week 6: 60% 

But in the non-linear world of the rule of 6, the results actually look more like this:

Week 1: 0%
Week 2: 0%
Week 3: 0%
Week 4: 0%
Week 5: 0%
Week 6: 60%

If you give up after Week 5, you’ll have spent 83% of the money and achieved 0% of your goal.  You can only achieve a worthwhile ROI if you have the stomach to stick with your guns and keep sending your message out, even without visible results.

I have a theory on why this principle works.  I believe that what’s actually happening is that a lot of the effects of marketing are exponential, rather than linear.  That’s why overnight success is generally an oxymoron.

What’s actually happening is that the press only picks up on the effects of “week six” marketing–the debut album, or the starring role in a sleeper hit that shocks Hollywood–and completely ignores the previous five weeks of marketing–the years of playing in clubs and building up a fan base, working for scale in indie movies and making the right contacts.

In my own life, I began 2002 as a failed entrepreneur who had managed to lose $6 million of investor money.  I had no job, no money, and no reasonable prospects (caveat: I did have degrees from Stanford and Harvard Business School, but we’ll ignore those for the time being).

It was around that time that I started getting involved in professional organizations such as SDForum and HBS Tech.  It was also around that time that I decided to change my hermit-like workaholic ways, and start reaching out to venture capitalists and other entrepreneurs.  And I started using something called Blogger that had recently been launched, and was being run by a single dogged entrepreneur named Evan Williams.

For years, it was difficult to see how those activities were making a difference.  Those were weeks 1-5.  But fast-forward to today, and all the little things and persistence ended up making a big difference.  I’ve met hundreds of wonderful people since then, including the founders at PBwiki, whom I invested in, and later joined, and PBwiki’s main VC backers.  And most of these good things have happened in just the past 18 months (helped along by a heck of a boom in our industry).

But if I had gotten discouraged with entrepreneurship and decided to cash in my chips by becoming a consultant or investment banker, I would never have had all these great experiences.

Marketing is hard, and the rule of six makes it harder.  You have to be willing to persist, even when all the standard measures scream for you to pull back and give up.  But if you’ve made the right call, and you persevere through day six, you may find you’ll get the chance to bask in the glory of your “overnight success.”

When I started my first company (long, long ago in a valley not so far away), I learned a valuable lesson from Jim Fitzsimmons, the guy I recruited to be CEO.

Jim had experience both as an entrepreneur, and as a corporate manager (he had been assistant controller of all of Pepsico), and he had a favorite saying:

“Chris, you get what you inspect, not what you expect.”

Translation?  Unless you can define success in measurable terms, you’re not likely to achieve it.

This is why metrics are the lifeblood of marketing.  Just as professional military commanders understand that logistics are usually more important than the oh-so-sexy field of strategy, so professional marketers understand that metrics are more important than flashier cousins like branding and positioning.

Unlike Sales or Engineering, where everyone knows how to measure the results (”How much did you sell?”  “Does the product work?”), Marketing is not blessed with such simple metrics.  While it is important to be in the right sector of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, inclusion or exclusion doesn’t determine the fate of your company.  And don’t forget, Pets.com had great brand awareness.

There are marketers that slide by on pleasant talk and cool advertisements–these are often enough, especially in large organizations, to satisfy questions about the marketing budget–but startups don’t have that luxury.

It’s a challenge, but you have to pick the metrics that matter, and then manage to them.

My personal philosophy is to manage sales support and branding/awareness separately.  Measure your lead generation programs on the sales they generate (and how cost-effectively they do so), and separately agree on the amount you’re willing to spend to generate awareness and PR.

Even then, I believe it is important to set PR targets such as # of mentions and article placements.  Otherwise, it is far to easy to spend $20K/month on a PR agency without knowing what you’re really getting.

Figuring out what to measure isn’t easy, but if you do a good job of defining your goals, it makes your ability to judge your success (and justify your budget) far greater than relying on that old-fashioned blarney.

As the new guy at PBwiki, folks often ask me about why I wanted to join the company. (thankfully, not too many ask the logical corollary, “Why would PBwiki want you as an employee?”)

Besides the people here, who are great, the biggest reason for me is that I really love the product. Even more importantly, I love what it does for my life.

PBwiki really is my external brain. I use it to keep track of everything in my life.

For example, for my work, I use the company wiki to keep track of all my work.

After every meeting I attend, the first thing I do is to create a new wiki page and enter my notes. That way, everyone in the company has the chance to see them, and to edit and add to them. It’s a great way of keeping everyone up to date.

A couple of weeks ago, David actually came over to my desk after I saved my latest batch of notes, because he had also been working on a similar issue, and when the notification came through, he realized that it was a perfect time for us to get together and work on things together. Without PBwiki, it might have been days or weeks before we synched up.

The next step is to take any action items or tasks and add them to my Job Page (you can find the template I use for my Job Page on the Transparency Project wiki). This way, everyone can see what I’ve put on my plate, and they know who to follow-up with if I don’t make timely progress.

I’m convinced that these simple actions save me hours of time every week, simply because I don’t have to spend time thinking, “What did we talk about,” and “What should I do now?”

Naturally, one of the daily/weekly ongoing tasks I have on my job page is to post to this blog each Thursday.

I’d love to hear how you are using PBwiki to save time or become more productive, either in your personal life, or at work. I’ll try to share some of the best stories in future posts, both because I think it’s cool to highlight what people have done, and because it may help other readers figure out new ways that they too can make their lives easier with PBwiki.

–Chris (The New Guy) Yeh

Last week we announced the improved ‘All Pages’, where you can locate all of the wiki pages that you created. After reviewing the page and listening to your feedback, we happy to bring back the ‘rename page’ option.

On the new ‘All Pages’ you are now able to delete and rename individual pages.

To see the new AllPages or rename a wiki page, click “Show all pages� at the bottom of your wiki (or visit http://YOURWIKI.pbwiki.com/AllPages).

Mark Frydenberg, Bentley College
PBwiki and Camtasia - Changing the Way I Teach

College students today live in a world filled with social media and interactive technology. In my Technology Intensive IT 101 class at Bentley College, the question for me isn’t how do I teach students about new technologies– but rather, how do I teach with them?

Two software tools that have had the greatest impact on the way that I teach this course these days are PBWiki and Camtasia Studio. Both invite students to become involved in the process of creating course content, and sharing their knowledge with their classmates.

So how has PBWiki changed the way that I teach?

Syllabus accurately reflects class pace
The PDF file of the course schedule that I posted on BlackBoard before the first class was always “off-schedule� by the third. On a wiki, the course schedule becomes a living document that I can easily update if we end up spending more or less time than anticipated on a topic. In addition, a 30Boxes calendar posted on the front page of my PBWiki tracks homework due dates, exam dates, and other special happenings.

In addition to administrative uses, the power of the wiki as a course management tool comes when students add information to it. They post links to Internet sites and sightings; they share links to their web pages, blogs, and Twitter accounts. They use the wiki to sign up for group projects and collaborate with their partners.

Shared Class Notes
This semester I started using the class wiki for a collaborative note taking project. Two or three students are assigned to post their notes for a particular class session on a wiki page. Their classmates review the notes, adding in anything they learned that the two starting authors may have omitted. Together, the students are writing the text that reflects what they actually learned (not what I taught!) in each class session. If I feel that something important is missing from the notes, either I’ll go back and add it, or more likely, we’ll talk about it in the next class, and undoubtedly a student will have made the appropriate updates.

Students as active participants
Recently I reviewed Camtasia Studio 5, and created a screencast about how I use PBwiki for my class wiki. Watching screencasts that demonstrate procedural tasks (such as talking students through the process of setting up an FTP account, or adding an image or button to a web site) has been an effective way for students to master those tasks. Many say that when they are first learning, it is easier to follow a screencast than read a set of printed instructions. The number of students asking “Can you show me again how you did that?� has been greatly reduced.

Incorporating Camtasia and PBWiki into my classroom has allowed students to become teachers outside the classroom, as they are active participants not only in their own learning, but also in that of the entire class.

Want a guided tour of my wiki? Watch this Camtasia screencast.

This morning Leng Caloh, the Managing Online Editor for KPBS in Southern California, wrote us to let us know that they’re using PBwiki to coordinate reporting on the Southern California wildfires. “The wiki has been a godsend,â€? she said. “PBwiki has a great service and it’s helping us to serve the public!â€?

Because it’s such a chaotic situation, we’re offering two weeks of free Platinum wikis for anyone involved with the Southern California wildfires.

PBwiki will provide free public or private wikis to help recovery organizations:
* Provide real time updates to internal staff members
* Collaborate with disaster recovery team members
* Prioritize and coordinate with disaster relief team members on the ground
* Upload videos and photos
* List emergency contacts and their status

PBwiki will provide free public or private wikis to help family members:
* Communicate and update all friends and family from one central location
* Post critical support services contact information
* Network with other neighbors affected by the fire

PBwiki for emergency communications
Check out what one of our PBwiki users, David Stephenson of Stephenson Strategies, said: “Wikis are ideally suited to emergency communications because they allow anyone who knows any aspect of what is happening to contribute that information — and then others can correct it as conditions change.”

Hopefully we can help, even if it’s in a small way.

If you’re involved in the disaster-relief effort, or know someone who is, email fire-relief@pbwiki.com with the name of your free wiki to be upgraded (on your honor).

Thanks,

-Ramit Sethi
PBwiki Co-founder

[Update]: Here’s one such wiki: The San Diego Fires wiki (via Paul Kedrosky)

Last week we made a simple but helpful change to the way you can access information on your sidebar. Our goal was 1) to introduce some quick steps new users can take to create a PBwiki and, 2) make it easier to access the information that is important to all wiki users - namely what pages have been recently edited and who were the latest visitors to the site.

The old side bar looked like this - a single sidebar where you can place links to your wiki pages, tips on using the wiki, and other helpful information.

The single tab sidebar is wonderful for advanced users who know how to set up a wiki, add pages, upload files, etc. However our newer users have been a little confused about what they’re able to do on a wiki, and where they can find the tools that they’re looking for.

QuickStart Tab
Based on that feedback we’ve introduced a new QuickStart tab to familiarize new users with the simple steps you can take to create a Pbwiki. It gives quick links to edit your wiki, create a new page, upload pictures and share your wiki with others. We hope this will be a valuable tool for our new users as they learn to set up a PBwiki.

The QuickStart tab looks like this:

Once you’ve completed all four steps in the the quick start process you can easy close the tab permanently or leave it there as a quick way to create a new page, upload pictures and share your wiki with others. We think this will be an easy way to encourage new users to get started with their wiki, and act as a reference to intermediate users who need a quick refresher.

Recent Activity Tab
We’ve also introduced a Recent Activity tab to show you who has been to your wiki and what pages have been edited. This tab works in coordination with PBwiki notifications to show you exactly what has been changed on your wiki and when it was changed. The bottom section of the Recent Activity tab is built to show the last 10 visitors who have been on your site and allow you to easily contact them by clicking on their name.

SideBar
The traditional SideBar tab has been moved to the far right hand side of the three tabbed sidebar. This is where you can create a navigational index of your PBWiki. Many of our users place links to their wiki pages, instructions on how to use a wiki and even a wiki wide calendar.

I’m excited to see how new users respond to these simple changes in the sidebar design. I have the feeling that with the simple QuickStart guide more newbies will understand how to use their PBwiki and the Recent Activity tab will allow all users to clearly identify who is on their wiki and what pages have the most activity. Fun for everyone!

I received this awesome email from Ann Randall, Projects Coordinator at Boise State University, and I couldn’t wait to share it with the PBwiki educator community. Check out the super innovative ways that Ann enhanced her existing classroom tool - Blackboard - by using a PBwiki.

“Hi! I doubt this is unique, but I just have to share my experience with PBwiki this summer!

I work in the administrative Distance Education department at Boise State University, and this summer I was asked to teach the Educational Technology online graduate course, “Teaching Adults Online,” as an adjunct.

Classes at Boise State are hosted on Blackboard, but many classes, especially in our EdTech program, use social networking methods as well.

There are the great ways we’ve found to use PBwiki in addition to and sometimes even replacing Blackboard.

Personal Page
Each student created a personal page, to write their reflections on the reading assignments. They found it worked best to use their personal page as a table of contents, creating a separate page for each week’s reflection, and we kept links to each student’s main personal page in the sidebar. I created a blog as well and used it as a place to communicate with students after I noticed how frequently they visited my page.

In this case PBwiki was a substitute for Blackboard was with student reflections- the wiki replaced using blog or on the Blackboard discussion board forum. Responses that would have been posted as discussion threads in Backboard were instead posted as PBwiki “comments.” In addition, some of the comments I would have ordinarily inserted in discussion threads I entered instead in my own personal PBwiki page.

Group Assignments
We also used the wiki for sign-ups for small group assignments, for extra credit projects, and for group reports.

For this I used PBwiki instead of our Learning Management System (LMS), Blackboard. Instead of assigning students to groups in Blackboard, I allowed individuals to self-assign using PBwiki.

Turn in homework
The third way PBwiki replaced our Blackboard was in posting assignments. Assignments such as the LMS reviews, the synchronous chat tool reviews, the reflective comments on assigned readings, and even the final project were posted to PBwiki instead of being sent to me or posted to Blackboard

Publicize class work
We kept the wiki private until the end of class. Then the final project was to collaborate to pull together the various insights and projects into a cohesive “public ready” site:.

Lessons learned
I think the class did a fantastic job with the site. I will be teaching the class again next summer, here are some thoughts on what I learned.

• In the future I will have each student create a PBwiki sign-on so I can be sure I always know who is making contributions. I will send out individual invitations then with contributor privileges, instead of giving them all administrator privileges–something the class saw as a drawback to using wikis for their own classes.

• One note is important here. I chose wikis as our Web 2.0 tool because they are more collaborative than blogs, and I thought they would be more
effective in creating a sense of community. There was some initial resistance to “blogging” on the wiki, but when I explained that I only wanted to introduce one new tool and wikis are more flexible than blogs, that died down. By the end of class, everyone seemed quite enthusiastic about the wiki, and I think they were all pleased with their final public product.”

Check out Ann’s PBwiki here: http://teachingadultsonline.pbwiki.com/

Ann Randall, Faculty Support and Projects Coordinator
Distance Education, Extended Studies
Boise State University

We’re excited to announce the launch of our latest security feature, My.PBwiki.com, a fast way to log into your multiple PBwikis with one personal password and easily control access on your wiki.

As a wiki Administrator the new My.PBwiki.com gives you unprecedented control over who is active on your wiki and what they are allowed to do. Here’s how:

• Individual sign on names and passwords ensure that only those select people who you chose to access your wiki site.
• My.PBwiki.com makes it easy to manage what contributors are allowed to see and edit.
• By ensuring that everyone has a My.PBwiki.com profile you will never see another anonymous edit ever again.

My.Pbwiki.com makes it simple for all PBwiki users to quickly log into all their PBwiki accounts with just one password. Simply create a user name and password, then add your many Pbwiki accounts.

Check out this video we made to explain how to create a My.PBwiki.com profile and the huge benefits it can bring to both wiki administrators and editors.

Head to My.PBwiki.com to create your own personalized log in and eliminate unwanted anonymous edits!

We’ve been receiving e-mails over the last few days asking about changes you’ve been seeing when creating a new wiki or simply when exploring pbwiki.com. As a growing company, we’re constantly experimenting with ways to improve our site, and we’re always working to make the PBwiki experience even better than it is today. The changes are perfectly normal and we hope you appreciate as PBwiki becomes better every day.

So, if you refresh your page and see a different-colored button or different text, don’t worry — it’s just the PBwiki Optimizers at work!

Thanks for being part of the PBwiki community, and if you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us.