What do analysts actually do?

As you think about the debate about Forrester's blogging policy, I'd like to share a little more about how the opinions you read from Forrester analysts come about. With 15 years experience in this business, I know it's a collaboration. The analyst needs data and support from the company, and the company needs the analyst's brain and benefits from the reputation that analysts build up. A lot of time, resources, and quality standards go into what we do. I'd like to take you inside the relationship between analysts and Forrester. This is a long post, because there's a lot that goes into what we do.

(This may also prove enlightening to people who think Forrester and other technology analysts just sit around thinking stuff and saying whatever they want -- believe me there's a lot more to it than that!)

The first thing to understand is that Forrester is in the business of helping our clients in their various roles (interactive marketers, CIOs,technology product managers, etc.) to be successful. We do this by coming up with insights and analysis based on information and data we collect. Our business is based on the fact that an informed and thoughtful opinion based on knowledge, data, and collaboration with other knowledgeable people is worth something.

The analyst's thinking is central to every insight we deliver. Except for straight data requests from our surveys, if you get value from us, you work with an analyst. Forrester wants to build up the analyst's reputation, because clients want to talk to smart people. All of our materials have analyst's names and pictures on them.

We are organized by role. So insights are designed to help a particular type of client, like a CMO or a security person in IT. Here are all the roles we serve.

So, how do those insights get created? All the work I am describing happens simultaneously -- our days are very variegated -- but it's easiest to understand in stages.

Gathering information. We get information from a lot of different sources. For one thing, we gather data from consumer surveys in which the analysts help write the questions. These can take many months from conception to generate usable data, and they are expensive to create; they are more useful since they include many questions on one survey that can be cross-referenced, and often relate to historical data about the same questions. If I were doing a piece on social networks, for example, I would start with data we have collected on participation in those networks.

We also survey other kinds of people, for example, CIOs or interactive marketers, about their plans.

Surveys only tell you about the buy side. To learn more, we get briefings from vendors (like Facebook) who want us to know about their offerings so we can write about them and tell clients about them. We may request those briefings, or they may come to us. Either way, we ask a lot of blunt questions. (If you're a vendor and want to brief us, go here.)

We also learn from interviews (some on the record, some confidential) with people using the technology. So I might interview a company who built a Facebook application about how well it worked.

Our interactions with clients are designed to serve the clients, of course, but we learn a lot from them as well. If five clients in the space of a month want to know about organizing for social media, we know we had better get to work on a piece about organization.

Analysts get a lot of help in gathering this information. We have whole teams of people who are survey experts. We also have support staff (researchers and research associates) who help gather information and set up interviews.

Generating insights. Data by itself is not useful. Clients don't just want information,they want to know what to do about it. So an analyst works on turning the information into insights. Typically, this involves a lot of collaboration. Ideas will go through many drafts and get reviewed by senior research people -- principal analysts or vice presidents. We also like to get together and share ideas with each other, or tap experts (for example, when I write about mobile, I'll work with Julie Ask and Charlie Golvin).

The point of this process is to make sure we are saying something that's actually valuable and useful. A lot of stuff that doesn't qualify as new insights gets cut.

Delivering those insights. Most of our insights still get delivered in the form of reports. Most of our revenue still comes from subscriptions to research. Those reports are available only to clients who are subscribers.

We've become much more diverse in the delivery of insights, though. As you've seen if you read our blogs, analysts now blog about results in reports, and about many ideas that are not report-level insights. (Right now the analysts contribute to team blogs, but we'll all get individual blogs soon.) We try to balance what's in the blogs for free and what clients pay for -- the highly refined, often data-intensive reports and the subscriptions to research have a price, but there is plenty of content that's not so refined that we give away for free. Clients generally welcome both, and the blogs are also helpful in generating interest from people. We twitter, too: check out all the analysts twitter feeds!

We also deliver those insights in inquiries -- clients who subscribe and pay for inquiry can ask us about anything they need help with.

We also deliver those insights in our events, which are a successful part of our business. For example, our marketing event is coming up in April in Los Angeles.

We also do speeches and consulting. Some of the speeches and all of the consulting is paid. Our ability to do consulting and generate revenue from it comes from the insights in the data and the research, and the support staff in consulting; without the research and insights, we would have no consulting business. We are not a consulting company, we are a research company that also does consulting, and we want to keep it that way.

Finally, we do get quoted in the press. This is fun for analysts, and it happens in part because our PR staff are helping to make it happen. Getting quoted is great for generating awareness and boosting your image, but you can't get carried away -- in the end, clients, not reporters, are the ones that need to be happy.

Final thoughts: if you're not a client of ours, much of what I just described is invisible to you. Our blogs and twitter feeds are highly visible; you may see that our reports are available for purchase one at a time; you may notice our press quotes. But while this is what non-clients see, serving clients with insights is the actual job, and selling research subscriptions is the biggest source of our revenue.

As for the quality of our insights: we make predictions, they are not always right. And there is always the wag who reads our comments in the press or on a blog and says "Everyone knows that." But we work pretty hard to generate insights for our clients that are not available anywhere else, based on objective research and data. As long as clients continue to find that useful enough to subscribe to, we'll keep doing it. Based on my interactions with clients, it's rewarding for both sides.

Guest Post: Forrester Wants More Analysts Using Social Tools

Note: This post is from Cliff Condon, Forrester's VP in charge of our social media efforts, and represents the company's official position on the topic of analyst blogging.

Wow.  There are a lot of comments flying around about Forrester’s yet-to-be released blog platform and associated policy – some accurate, some not.  The blog posts from Forrester analysts like Josh Bernoff  and Augie Ray have had the most accurate information to date.

Since my job is to lead many of Forrester’s social initiatives, including the new blog platform, I thought I would weigh in.  So let me add some clarity to what we are working on:

1. Forrester wants more analysts using social tools because it makes for better research.  The research we write for clients has always depended on a rich two-way conversation with experts and practitioners in the marketplace.  The rise of social tools like blogs and Twitter allows analysts to extend that conversation with more people in the marketplace.  The more smart people our analysts interact with, the better our research will be.  That’s the basis of the Groundswell.  Therefore, Forrester is investing in building social tools and associated best-practice training for our analysts so that more of them get involved.  
2. We are building a new blog platform to provide each analyst with a personal blog.  Our platform today supports team blogs based on the professional roles we serve – such as the Forrester Consumer Product Strategy blog.  The new platform we are building will allow our analysts to also maintain an individual blog on their coverage area.  We are doing this so that our analysts can have direct conversations with key players in the marketplace and so clients have the flexibility to engage at an individual analyst level or a team level. 
3. We want to make it easy for our clients.  Our clients rely on us to help make them successful.   They have told us that they are starved for time – they subscribe to our services in part because they conveniently get the insight they need from us and others who join in the Forrester conversation.  Therefore, we can best serve client needs by placing all of our blog content in one place (at blogs.forrester.com), and put it in context alongside the rest of our data and analysis. 

I hope that adds some clarity to what we are working on – I’ll share more as we move closer to roll-out later in the quarter.  However, I felt it necessary to add to the conversation now since there has been discussion about analysts’ brands and the Forrester brand.  The fact is we want to do everything possible to give analysts a high degree of visibility. Giving every analyst a personal blog is a step toward that goal. Our analysts’ reputation and our own are tied together.  Our new blog platform is being designed to boost them both.

Why our analysts blog at forrester.com

by Josh Bernoff

I'm not a corporate spokesperson for Forrester. But as a prominent social media analyst here, I wanted to comment on the recent discussion regarding our policy on analysts and blogs.

Forrester is and has always been a leader with analyst blogging. Charlene Li started this blog you’re reading in 2004. We love blogging. And many of our colleagues that came from Jupiter, the company we acquired in 2008 are also avid bloggers.

The Forrester management team needed to make a decision about analysts and blogging -- on our site or off. I didn't make that decision, but I did advise the management, and I agree with the decision we made. What people need to understand is that Forrester is an intellectual property company, and the opinions of our analysts are our product. Blogging is an extension of the other work we do -- doing research, writing reports, working with clients, and giving speeches, for example. As Sting said, "Poets, priests and politicians/Have words to thank for their positions." Analysts, too.

Think about other companies that employ writers and creators of opinion and analysis, like newspapers and magazines. Where do you find David Pogue's posts about gadgets? On the New York Times site, since that's who employs him to do those reviews. You won't find Katie Couric's posts outside of CBS , either. Why not? Because of the confusion that would arise. You know when David and Katie talk, their opinions are part of the content they create for their employers, who are in the content business.

Companies in the information and analysis business are not the same as other companies from this perspective. There are many good blogs by executives and other workers in all sorts of companies, and we certainly believe such companies should allow their employees to blog, subject to the usual rules about not disclosing confidential information, etc.

But for Forrester, it serves our clients better to be able to get to all our blogs from one place, and to know the opinions of analysts that they see are part of the other opinions they read in our reports, in press quotes, and in everywhere else we talk.

Forrester does not yet have individual analyst blogs on our site, but that's coming quite soon. This is why it's so ironic to read comments that "We don't let analysts have individual blogs" or "Forrester should read Groundswell." I cowrote Groundswell, and I believe our policy is the right one. Groundswell says that your employees will be blogging -- it doesn't say that content companies should have their content creators blog anywhere they want. If you're creating content for a content company, that company ought to host your blog.

We’re not stopping analysts from blogging about stuff unrelated to our analytical work. And they can Twitter all they want. And they can blog all they want, about anything relevant to their jobs, right here on blogs.forrester.com. I count 23 blogs there. Some of them are pretty good.

Our analysts will still be blogging here at forrester.com. We're improving the platform to make it easier for analysts to have their own space, and we expect more analysts to be blogging here more often than ever before. You're welcome to take issue with our opinions. But rest assured, you will be able to read those opinions, and we can be just as analytical, provocative, and interesting here at forrester.com as anywhere else on the Web.

2/8/10: For more detail, see guest post from Cliff Condon, in charge of social media policy at Forrester.

Take our survey, score your HERO project (social media, mobile, or other tech)

by Josh Bernoff

That social media project you are working on. Is it worth it?

The iPhone app -- is it going to pay off, or just drag your job into the toilet?

Our new book Groundswell HEROes is about highly empowered and resourceful operatives (that's you, if you're considering, building, or managing a technology project that touches customers). As we reviewed these projects, we realized that people often have difficulty up front in identifying just what they are about to get themselves into. It's not just the value for customers that's in question, and it's not just the technical effort. It's the political effort -- all the people who have a stake and try to stop you or help you (or "help" you).

We devote a whole chapter to this, and we've also developed a tool for measuring projects. Answer a few questions, and then the tool tells you if the effort is in line with the expected value, and whether you've generated a cute little idea (class 1) or a major "shadow IT" effort (class 4). We call it a value-effort evaluation (VEE score).

The tool is in beta. I'd like your help in testing it. Here's what to do:

1. Click on the "TRY IT" button below to take the survey and see how your project stacks up. It works for projects you are about to undertake, or ones you are in the middle of, or ones you have completed.
2. Please take notes while taking the survey, if you see something that seems wrong or missing or confusing.
3. At the end of the survey, we'll provide you with a screen that shows a little insight into your project and the challenges you will be facing.
4. Please help make the tool better. There's a little box at the end of the survey, you can include feedback there based on your notes. Or add a comment on this blog. Or email me at jbernoff at forrester dotcom.

I think the tool will be helpful in clarifying the path you are on. I know you can help us make it better. Look for a much nicer version of this once the book is done.

Note: because the survey tool costs a small but nonzero amount of money per completed survey, we may have to shut this down if more than a thousand people take it. Unlikely but possible. We'll let you know.

Proof the Splinternet is real

by Josh Bernoff

Since I published the post about the Splinternet Tuesday, a lot of discussion has been flying about. See the comments on that post, the post on Advertising Age, and my interview with Kai Ryssdal on Marketplace.

First, let's be clear. It's the Internet applications that are splintering, not the Internet itself. The most splintered of these applications is the Web, but there are others (tried running Skype on your iPhone lately?).

Second, it's wonderful that standards like HTML5 are coming along, but that won't change some things. Apple will still decide what apps can run on its iPad. Facebook will still require a login and much of its content won't be visible to Google. And the iPhone screen will still be a lot smaller than most Web pages expect. This creates dilemmas for site and application developers -- new decisions to be made. HTML5 will not miraculously cure that.

To clarify what I mean, let's invent the "Splinternet Index". This is purely notional (you can't accurately  measure most of these things), but ask yourself the following questions:

1. What proportion of all Web page views on all connected devices yield an experience that isn't even close to what its creators intended?
2. In absolute numbers, how many Web page views yield a page that doesn't render the way its creators intended?
3. What proportion of content owners time (this includes content sites, marketers, anyone delivering interactive content) is spent deciding which platforms to support and customizing content for those platforms?
4. What proportion of content owners' delivery of content goes to platforms for which standard analytics tools don't exist yet?
5. What proportion of content owners' interactive budgets is spent on delivery to platforms where content is controlled by the platform owner (e.g. iPhone/iPad apps, Facebook applications, Xbox content)?
6. What proportion of "interesting" Web content (content that the majority of people might reasonably be seeking) is hidden behind a login and inaccessible to search engines?

I contend that all of these numbers are the highest they have been since 1995. I also believe that they will be higher two years from now than they are now, regardless of what standards may become accepted. That is why the Splinternet is here to stay.

Photo credit: Lars Plougmann via Flickr

The Splinternet means the end of the Web's golden age

by Josh Bernoff

The golden age of the Web is coming to an end. Prepare for the Splinternet.

As we all gird for the launch of the Apple Tablet, take a moment to step back and realize what all these new devices are doing. The whole framework of the Web (and Web marketing) is based around the idea that everything is in a compatible format. Any browser, any computer, any connection, you see pretty much the same thing.

Now with iPhones, Androids, Kindles, Tablets, and TVs connecting to the Web, that's not true. Your site may not work right on these devices, especially if it includes flash or assumes mouse-based navigation. Apps that work on the iPhone don't work on the Android. Widgets for FiOS TV don't work anywhere else.

Meanwhile, more and more of the interesting stuff on the Web is hidden behind a login and password. Take Facebook for example. Not only do its applications not work anywhere else, Google can't see most of it. And News Corp. and the New York Times are talking about putting more and more content behind a login.

Web marketing has grown since 1995, based on the idea that everything is connected. Click-throughs, ad networks, analytics, search-engine optimization -- it all works because the Web is standardized. Google works because the Web is standardized.

Not any more. Each new device has its own ad networks, format, and technology. Each new social site has its login and many hide content from search engines. 

We call this new world the Splinternet (with a nod to Doc Searls and Rich Tehrani, who used the term before us with a somewhat different meaning). It will splinter the Web as a unified system. The golden age has lasted 15 years. Like all golden ages, it lasted so long we thought it would last forever. But the end is in sight.

Here's what not to do: panic and try to unify things again. The shattering cannot be undone.

Here's what to do: choose your devices carefully -- investments in one cannot be transferred easily to others if you make a mistake. Rethink analytics, links, and measurement -- they're just becoming available in the new environments. Promote the new channels, SEO won't help you so much here. Platforms like iPhone apps and Facebook are some of the most exciting new channels out there. Just realize that you're leaving the comfy environment of the Web behind -- along with all the tools you've grown dependent on -- as you embrace the new platforms.

Forrester clients can read our report with more details.

Note added 1/27 after iPad announcement: It appears the iPad, like the iPhone, doesn't support Adobe Flash and runs the same proprietary iPhone apps. Regardless of how successful it becomes, it's another splinter -- an Apple controlled platform in which much of the Web's infrastructure is missing.

See Proof the Splinternet is real, added 1/28,

 

You need to read Seth Godin's Linchpin. Or be a cog in the machine. Your choice.

by Josh Bernoff

Seth Godin's Linchpin is a remarkable book. You should buy a copy. (It's available on January 26.) Unless, of course, you're enjoying that rut you're in.

First of all, let's acknowledge that Seth is a polarizing figure. He is the god of small business, and his books like Permission Marketing have transformed the way people think about marketing. But his books are written to persuade and inspire, and rarely have the kind of the gritty proof and statistics that hard-edged businesspeople demand. This leads many leading business thinkers to write him off.

The kind of impassioned plea that Seth writes doesn't work if you don't buy the original premise. As a result some recent efforts, like Meatball Sundae and Tribes, haven't really hit the mark. But Linchpin does, in my opinion. I think Seth has discovered a fundamental truth about work.

Seth's premise is that today's organizational structure is a throwback to the days of factories, with interchangeable parts and interchangeable workers. Basically, this means that if you do your job as you're told, then you're easy to replace. Seth wants you to "become indispensable" instead. There are several elements to this. First, you need to make a choice -- wake up and stop being a sheep. Second, you need to do your work as a gift -- as art -- because it makes you happier, not just to please your boss. Third, you need to triumph over your lizard brain -- the part that wants you to conform and avoid dangerous actions that might make you stand out. Fourth, what you start or imagine doesn't matter -- a real linchpin ships products, completes the task.

Notice how banal this sounds as I write it out. But this is a radical message, and Seth is the most talented business writer there is. Here are some excerpts from the two dozen pages I dogeared (these paragraphs are from all over the book):

The Boss's Lie:"What I want is someone who will do what I tell them to." "What I want is someone who works cheap." "What I want is someone who shows up on time and doesn't give me a hard time." So if this is what the boss really wants, how come the stars in the company don't follow these three rules?

[On work as art] "Art [in this context] is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another. . . . I think it's art when a great customer service person uses a conversation to convert an angry person into a raving fan. And it's art when Craig Newmark invents a new business model that uses the Internet to revolutionize classifieds."

Nobody Cares How Hard You Worked. It's not an effort contest, it's an art contest. As customers, we care about ourselves, about how we feel, about whether a product or service or play or interaction changed us for the better.

The future of your organization depends on motivated human beings selflessly contributing unasked-for gifts of emotional labor. And worse yet, the harder you work to quantify and manipulate this process, the more poorly it will work.

[On the beginnings and ends of projects.] Get scared early, not late. Be brave early, not late. Thrash now, not later. It's too expensive to thrash later.

The resistance [also known as complacency] would like you to curl up in a corner, avoid all threats, take no risks, and hide. It feels safe, after all. The paradox is that the more you hide, the riskier it is.

In my mind, one of the most valuable things in this book is a chart on page 181. There are two axes. The x-axis goes from passive to passionate. The y-axis goes from attachment (that is, inflexible dedication to your own world view) to discernment (knowing what to live with and what to seek change in). I would call that y-axis "wisdom". Seth wants you to aim for the upper right, high passion plus high wisdom, the realm of the linchpin.

From my years of experience working with people, passion is a trait most visible in the young. Wisdom is a trait that is more visible in people who are more experienced. This is why there are so few wise and passionate linchpins. Seth would never be so crass as to typecast people by age, but I know there are plenty of experienced and wise but passive people (he calls them bureaucrats, you know the type) and plenty of young, passionate, and inflexible people (he calls them fundamentalist zealots.) This is why the wise, passionate person stands out.

The real reason I like this book is that after nearly 30 years of work I have arrived in a place Seth would describe as a linchpin and I am loving it. I have always been as passionate and creative as I can, just to amuse myself, why work if it's boring. This is a childish quality but I retain it at age 51. On the other hand, I have learned some discernment that I sure didn't have in 1982. Every quarter, my boss (and I have had many) sets goals with me related to what the company needs. At the end of the quarter, often, what I accomplish is very different from what we thought would be useful. But typically, that boss looks at what I did and says "that was what we needed" and rewards me anyway. I cannot be a cog, and fortunately, they have recognized that a cog is not what they need. In the long term, all of my success so far has come from this sort of thinking.

I thought of some of my younger colleagues as I read this book, working so hard to live up to what their bosses have told them they should be doing. Some of them do exactly as they are told. That's pretty dull. Some of them try to work longer hours to accomplish all the grunt work they have on their plates. They're frustrated. Some of them identify ways to contribute that nobody ever thought of, generate new ideas, and stand out for their creativity. The best do that even as they get the regular work done. I am drawn to them. They learn fast, and often, go far. Because being a linchpin is a blast.

Living in the cloud takes trust. Is your company worth trusting?

by Josh Bernoff

I pay my bills electronically. When possible, I get the bills sent to me electronically. Companies like Citibank (my credit card company), Bank of America (my bank), and Comcast (my cable company) like it that way. Less paper for them. Comcast calls it an "ecobill" to try to make me feel good about saving paper. This is supposed to be the new way we all live, in the Internet cloud. Paper is so 20th Century.

But if you do your personal business in the cloud, you are trusting these companies. How much do you trust them?

Case in point. Citibank sent me a new credit card with a new number because of a data breach at some merchant. Thank you, Citi, for looking out for me. It's a hassle fixing all the electronic payments again when these numbers change, but hey, better than fraudulent charges, right?

Of course, all my Citi credit card bills are online. Except the ones for my old card number. Most of those are just gone. I can see my new bills. I can also request copies of bills on the old card -- going back six months -- and they respond with a PDF in several days. Older than six months -- those bills are gone.

Why does this matter?

Well, I never saved copies of those older bills because I trusted Citi to keep them for me. The last two times I changed credit card numbers, they kept the old bills for me online. They were there two weeks ago. Now they're gone. Need to check for a charitable contribution and forgot what month it was in? Need to prove you paid some merchant? Screwed. I'm sure if I called them and knew what month to ask for, they could find it, but last time I called, I waited 15 minutes for some woman in India who dropped my call 10 minutes in.

This morning, my Comcast bill appeared in Bank of America's bill pay. So I checked it on the Comcast site. Except Comcast's system responds with "We're sorry, the system could not process your request at this time." Unlike every other company I deal with, Comcast bills me, not for what I did last month, but for what I'm going do next month. You bill me in advance, it would be nice if I could see what I'm paying for.

There's a lot of talk about trust these days. Banks are at the center of it. They're asking a lot more assurances and documentation from lenders, because they can't trust people to pay any more. They've raised their credit card rates.

But can we trust them? Financial services companies, merchants, and banks: if you want us to do business with you electronically, we need to be able to trust you. That means your systems must keep our information available. You want trust, act trustworthy.

Trust me, guys, you need to work on this.

Photo credit: Powerbooktrance via Flickr.

Social Technographics: Conversationalists get onto the ladder

by Josh Bernoff

Two and a half years ago, Charlene Li and I introduced Social Technographics, a way to analyze your market's social technology behavior. Social Technographics was carefully constructed, not as a segmentation, but as a profile (that is, the groups overlap). That's because the actual data told me that people participate in multiple behaviors, and not everyone at a higher level on the ladder actually does everything in the lower rungs.

Well, it worked. Despite the rapid pace of technology adoption, the rungs on the ladder have shown steady growth, with some (like Joiners) growing faster than others (like Creators). We have analyzed data for 13 countries, for business buyers, and even for voters. My colleagues and I have done profiles for over a hundred clients, profiling Walmart shoppers, non-profit donors, and doctors.

In all that time, only one thing has been bugging me: there was no place for Twitter.

We fixed that today.

As you can see from the graphic, we added a new rung, "Conversationalists". Conversationalists reflects two changes. First, it includes not just Twitter members, but also people who update social network status to converse (since this activity in Facebook is actually more prevalent than tweeting). And second, we include only people who update at least weekly, since anything less than this isn't much of a conversation.

Conversationalists intrigue me. They're 56% female, more than any other group in the ladder. While they're among the youngest of the groups, 70% are still 30 and up.

The data from this survey continues the trends from the last two years -- Spectators are maxing out at around 70%, Joiners are still growing rapidly, and Creators are still growing slowly.

As in any social environment, people have found lots of uses for this data, some of which make sense to me, and some which don't. Here are three ways you can use it:

1. Convince your boss this stuff is for real, and that if you haven't jumped on it, you're late.

2. Profile your customer base, and see what they're ready for, before planning a project to reach out to them. (After all, People is the first step in the POST process.)

3. Segment your audience; build different strategies for different segments. (Social is so prevalent now that a single approach for your company is probably too broad.)

How will you use it?

Note: For Forrester clients, full access to the research is available here.

How to get someone you don't know to help you. Hint: send a personal email.

I ask many people I don't know to help me -- to share numbers, interviews, etc. Often they say yes. I am grateful.

Many people who don't know me ask me for help. Often I say yes. But many of those requests are presented so poorly they make me cringe.

Basically, if you want my help, take a few moments to know who I am. If you send me what is clearly a mass email asking for help, forget it. There is a right and wrong way to do this.

This post is about the right way.

First off, use email. Yup. The old standby. I read my own emails; 95% of the people you want to reach do, too. It's fine to use LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter, but generally those are just a prelude to email anyway. I respond much more slowly to queries on LinkedIn and Facebook -- does the person you are seeking help from act that way, too?

If you don't have the email address, you can often track it down off a blog or on a site like ZoomInfo.Or, if you can reach someone through a social network, ask them for their email address there.("Hey, I have a proposal for you. Can I get your email and email it to you?"). Generally people will say yes.

Forget the phone, too interruptive, hit or miss, if you get the person in a bad mood you're dead. And sending unsolicited stuff through the mail is a really bad move and marks you as way behind the times. (Yes, people still do this -- I get letters all the time.)

The email should include the following elements, in roughly this order.

Subject line: A short description of what you want. Yup. Get to it. Don't hide it.

"Would like to interview you this week regarding your Twitter strategy for my new book"

"Want your input on my career change."

"Are you available to speak at our Web Developer conference on January 21?"

Greeting. Short. Start the body of the email with this. If you have a connection, use it.

"Hi, Josh"

"I saw you speak at the Web 2.0 Conference."

"We spoke briefly in Atlanta at Home Depot"

Who you are. Also short. The recipient doesn't want your whole life story. You can include a link for more info:

"I'm an MBA student at Harvard"

"I'm CMO of a small Web services company"

"I am a recruiter at the American Red Cross."

"I am the coauthor of the bestselling book Groundswell. If you want to know more, see my blog here: http://blogs.forrester.com/groundswell"

An indication you are familiar with the recipient's work. This shows respect, it also shows that you put a little effort in. This makes all the different. Don't be a sycophant, but you can certainly be respectful. DO NOT OMIT THIS -- since it really shows you are not a mass emailer.

"I have been really impressed with your online community for credit scores -- it's amazing you can get people to connect around this."

"I read your book and I found the section on customer service to be extremely helpful."

"I was amazed that a company like Coca-cola was able to reach out to its fans through a Facebook page -- I saw you were in charge of that effort in Advertising Age."

What you want. Brief, and to the point. Be respectful but neither pushy nor presumptive nor reticent. Ask in a straightforward way. (I get emails all the time that omit this. And I think "why are you bothering me?" No, I don't want to just be friends -- just tell me what you want.)

"I would like to interview you this week about your activities; it will take about half an hour."

"Can you tell me quickly whether you think a marketing person should bet their career or social media?"

"Can you share any statistics on traffic for Facebook pages?"

Statements of mutual benefit. Why should we work together?

"Many of the companies we profile come off looking great -- I think our readers would love to hear your story."

"We will include your company name in our article and attribute credit properly."

"I think based on my background that I'd be a great fit. You seem to need more people with industry experience."

Details. Keep it short, include what's necessary. If you have to include more information don't send a long email, don't paste in graphics, and for lord's sake don't include an unsolicited 3MB attachment that clogs up people's connections and email stores. A deadline is a good thing to include.

"Our conference attracts over 500 senior people and has included speakers like Barry Diller in the past."

"I will provide opportunities to review all the quotes for accuracy before we publish."

"I don't think this will take more than 15 minutes."

"I really need to complete this before the end of the week; I'm sorry about the rush, but the editors insist on this timing."

Friendly close and repeat important elements. By this point you can add a little flattery, just a little.

"I really hope you can help me -- you are clearly a marketing leader whose activity deserves to be highlighted."

"Thanks for your help with this conference. I hope to see you the next time I am in Boston."

Signature that's not some baroque object. Check your auto signature. Is that really what you want to be communicating to someone you want to ask for help? And how long is it? Are you really that important? Contact info is usually sufficient.

OK, let's put's it all together. Keeping it as short as possible is important, but with all these parts you get a moderate length email. Here's one I might send:

Would like to interview you this week for my new book, Groundswell Heroes

Sally:

My friend Fred at Vendor Solutions has said you are one of his best clients. I was particularly interested to hear how you measure the value of community activity for your business -- that seems amazing for someone who sells greeting cards.

If you don't know me, I'm the coauthor of Groundswell, a bestselling book about social technologies. You can read more about it here.

We usually tell people to evaluate ROI for communities partly through sales. But based on your comments in Advertising Age, it appears you've got a unique way to measure ROI.

I'd like to include the story of what you did in Groundswell Heroes, the new book we are publishing this year with Harvard Business Press. I'd like do an interview with you by Wednesday of next week. It should take about half an hour.

The folks we interviewed for Groundswell were generally pleased to be featured as examples of best practices in their industries.

Once this is written up, we'll send it to you so you can check that the facts are correct and that we have quoted you accurately.

I hope to hear from you in the next few days -- I'd really like to include you. I think People-based Greetings is just the kind of company our readers will be able to relate to. (And I just sent one of your cards to my mom -- she loved it!)

Thanks again.

Josh Bernoff | Senior VP, Idea Development

Forrester Research (www.forrester.com)

Co-author of Groundswell

617-613-5789

Blog: www.bernoff.com

Twitter: @jbernoff

Final Note: What do you do if you can't get through because the person is inaccessible? Go to the Web site and check the media relations and PR contacts --email them. And treat them with the same respect as you would the actual target. They are people too, they will respond to the human treatment. If it's not a media request, you may have to go through some other intermediary, but again, treat the intermediary with the same respect as you would the person you are reaching.