90 Minutes

That's about as long as it takes for a longer form of content, like a blog post, to gather feedback from the moment of publishing. You know how you're doing within that time frame. No comments, likes, or retweets, and you can be sure it will just sit there, a virgin in your stream. That doesn't mean it's not interesting, it's just not timed right for some reason.

90 minutes is the time it takes to play a football game - yes, in Italy we do call it that - although it may take a little longer to win a World Cup. 90 minutes is a long time if you're running up and down a regular soccer field - I know, I played the game - and it's a long time to be waiting for an answer, a goal, a score, something.

In customer service situations, 20 minutes may seem like an eternity. What happens if it takes you 90 minutes to diagnose an issue and come up with an answer? After all, it took more than that time to come up with the product or service, align the business to deliver it, and bring it to market.

But once the product or service is ready, marketers want to get the word out about it as broadly as possible and with as much bang as possible. Only to wish customers would wait to speak up if there is a service issue. Which is where the rubber meets the proverbial road.

So, if 90 minutes is our symbolic time it takes to diagnose and solve an average problem (yes, I'm aware of the issue with declaring any problem average), what are the options?

OPTION 1: Could you make up speed with breadth? In other words, could you spread your presence over as many social networks as possible to involve customers wherever they are? By being a known entity, you may go farther than other companies in gaining an understanding of what is important to your customers, first, and deliver that as you keep fixing the rest.

OPTION 2: Would you be willing to make up speed for participation? In other words, allowing your customers and peers to help diagnose and create solutions, moving the forums to your own Web site or Web properties, and sharing the outcomes.

OPTION 3: What if you made up speed with attention? This is something a company and individual earns over time and over actions - visible, public actions of regard and consideration. It is the question and age old flattering gesture of attention that we focus our conversation at Fast Company Expert blog, where we explore why and how fluency in customer conversation is a key business driver.

What other options can you think about?

Comments

[Timo Luege]

Hi Valeria,

I have two questions regarding your post:

1) Where did get that 90 minutes from?

2) I disagree :-).

For your assumption to be true, the post would have to be known to all potential readers within 90 minutes. But that is not the case. Content is initially being made available simultaneously but it then starts to spread at different speeds. For the sake of argument let's say I'm posting something which is then picked up by an unpopular friend who has a popular friend with a lot of friends. It can potentially take quite some time until a message has gone through that chain and it's potentially only when your message is being spread by an opinion-leader that it gets traction. And that opinion leader is not always the first part of the chain.

[Toto]

This very match between France and Italy during 2006 World Cup took much more than 90 minutes...

There were both extra time and penalties.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Timo - Thank you for arguing. Of course, I picked an arbitrary number, but it does fall within my experience/observation during the past 3 years with my blog - and the other 9 years facilitating a community. People by and large love novelty and won't look at something they perceive is "old" even though it may still be very relevant. Some have taken away the dates in older posts so that when people get to them, they think it's current and still comment. Yes, it's a superficial thing, but perception drives many a behavior.

@Toto - yes it did, and I watched every minute of it. I was actually in Italy during the whole World Cup - flags everywhere. It was great!

[CASUDI]

I thought your " speed of response" at 90 minutes very interesting. I think you are right or almost right when it comes to social networking "circles" as I have noticed how fast your commenters comment once your post is out. I comment and by the time it is up there are several ahead of me. However to use this "speed of response" criteria as a measure of success, I don't agree. In other circles, where readers have not yet ventured into social networking it still takes " time" for information to arrive. Unfortunate maybe, frustrating for me personally "yes", but true. My March post was still getting comments on the post 9 weeks later and then shifted to email where the dialog has continued with the latest arriving yesterday. My August post is still only just beginning it's reach, except for the few on twitter who were fast to respond (like Bryan @DR1665 with a comment) and several others via tweets and very surprising three separate very different niche print pubs who are interested in printing the content for their readers (that's another 2-3 months to reach :-)

Some of what you write is very timely yet some is timeless and a comment or any response even several months after the post would be a measure of success:-) I am sure there are many besides me who return or go to your older posts and you never know about your continuing success!

[Alex Grech]

I think the 'timing' issue is something that works against material that is published in a blog format. We're experiencing the same issue with a 'magazine-type' site that we are currently piloting. I agree that readers inherently look for the latest material and are likely ignore the 'old stuff'. Yet a site like Conversation Agent includes, as you put it, 'timeless' posts that remain relevant and are actually the building blocks of what is published many months later. In its current iteration, there may be no other option with a blog to occasionally go back and delete dates. And continue to develop inbound links from Twitter, FriendFeed, Facebook pages et al.

As for whether 90 minutes is the right metric - it's just nice to find someone in the US who can call 'the beautiful game' football. Plenty of life-changing stuff can happen in 90 minutes ;)

[peter]

That doesn't mean it's not interesting, it's just not timed right for some reason".

But only for the author.

For everyone else, the 90 minutes only starts from when they needed to know it. I've found the ancient writers to be masters of perfect timing.

But this is not your point - yours is how do we continue to work in an environment of shrinking patience. In my view, its starts with presence - time is more or less a measure of change. If you change slowly or imperceptibly in the eyes of the other time tends to slow down (regardless of what the clock says).

Hence if you don't walk the talk of your brand time will run really fast and you won't have much time to fix the problem before your brand has become dust, But align the two and it becomes harder to measure change and therefore time - and you don't need to rush.

Maybe.

Spk soon

Peter

[Valeria Maltoni]

Peter,

Your contribution to this topic is very timely as I've been thinking about change in relation to attention and time.

Pondering the relationships in what you shared here...

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Caroline - I'm thinking Peter weaved a good idea here that might address part of the change equation. The other, I might have touched upon it in my post tomorrow.

@Alex - indeed, 90 minutes is a good symbolic time frame. And, when lived every moment, it can be a pretty good stretch of time to make something happen.