I recently got a great deal on Toyota Prius from Motorphilia. I have never been so pleased purchasing a car. Not even when I bought a BMW 328 brand new.
Why do I love my car?
1.) I like the fact that my car contributes significantly less CO2 in the air than my other car did. Why? Because I as well as other people I like breathe air, and I’d just assume keep it clean.
2.) I am saddened by the political landscape in the Middle East and other regions dominated by oil. Oil is a capital-rich, labor poor industry, which often presents a ripe breeding ground for corruption. By driving a car that gets 45 miles to the gallon average, I am helping reduce the demand for oil. America should be free of this addiction once and for all.
3.) It’s very cheap to fill up. $20 can fill the tank.
4.) It drives well and has a very nice fit and finish.
Toyota puts a meter on the dash that shows how many miles you are getting per gallon. It feels like a video game when you try to reduce it, and I like the notion that they reward drivers for responsible behavior.
Joshua Baer claims he’ll never drive another gas powered vehicle again. I don’t blame him one bit. Once you realize how enjoyable it is to drive a battery powered car, you’ll wonder why more vehicles don’t use one.
Anyway, not trying to be a smug hippie here. I just really dig my new (to me) car.
I was a bit dismayed reading Clay Shirky’s A Rant About Women. It’s a long post, but in sum, he feels women do not advance because we aren’t willing to lie, cheat, and steal to get to the top. We don’t overinflate our abilities. And we need to because we have no role models to stick up for us.
Really? Should I want that? As a consumer, do you like dealing with people like that? Do you like bosses like that?
Would you rather this post be some self-fellating post about why I’m right and you are wrong, or would you rather just let my arguments speak for themselves?
I like that many women admit what they know and what they don’t know. I like that most whistle-blowers are women. My favorite co-workers tend to be women who can set aside ego for a mission. There are certainly men like this as well, and I dig them too. They get things done.
I’m not sure why you are going off on a rant about this. If you don’t think your male student deserves the glowing recommendation he has the gumption to ask of you, don’t give it to him. If you stop rewarding this behavior, your students stop behaving this way. It’s a pretty simple equation. By doing so, you will be protecting that student from going out in the real world and getting creamed by someone who will tear them to shreds for being all puff and no substance, or wreaking serious havoc on a company because of incompetence.
I don’t want to be a huge self-promoter. I want to impact positive change and find satisfaction in my work. I promote myself only in that it helps me achieve this. You can find my work here and here. It speaks for itself.
Maybe your rant should be about how people reward shameless self-promoters who tend to be men instead of people who would rather focus on doing a good job than lying, cheating and stealing our way to the top. It could be about how the promotion of self-promoters is dangerous and that we should stop it. You want a solution to your rant–do these solutions work well enough for you?
Today I watched two hours of Haiti news coverage. It breaks my heart to see the devastation in the area. I’m also a bit concerned that government bureaucracy could slow down crucial relief efforts.
If you check whitehouse.gov, we can give money and pay attention to what’s happening. But what if I have a big company and I can actually implement solutions much faster than a government organization can? Should I want to passively observe the devastation?
What if Obama used his massive power with the media to crowd source relief? I would imagine the first line of order would be to get communication in the area and relief workers to give out food and water. One of the telcos could step forth and various water and food companies could come forward. UPS actually does logistical work and could help coordinate some of the shipping to a Haiti port.
Doctors and pharmaceutical companies could offer their services. Airlines could fly them there.
After this, there would need to be security to keep the peace as well as efforts to offer shelter. I’m not sure the military could get crowd sourced, but Architecture for Humanity allows architects to contribute ideas for sustainable housing in developing nations. Obama could use the winning designs and then the fledgling building supply companies could offer up housing.
Why would these companies offer these services for nothing or next to nothing? The same reason why developers contribute to open source: for fulfillment and credibility.
1.) If Obama comes out and says, “We could count on American Airlines to deliver our thought leadership teams to Haiti on time,” it’s worth more than any add they could put on TV. If he says “Southwestern Bell really dropped the ball with our communication strategy”, the opposite rules apply. Obama and his staff can hold parts of the puzzle accountable, which keeps them honest regardless of payment.
2.) One backlink/dedicated page from the biggest crowdsourced project to date (Haiti relief from whitehouse.gov) is worth more than just about any backlink an SEO expert could buy you. You’d also want to consider all of the residual backlinks you’d get from people discussing specific parts of the project.
3.) It’s the right thing to do and giving product away is often cheaper than advertising.
This would obviously require “architects” familiar with this type of work to coordinate. But given how long government contracts can take to get through and the bureaucracy and expense involved, isn’t it the right thing to do? Shouldn’t that be what “Yes We Can” means?
I get bummed out when I find interesting people who simply don’t get Twitter. They sign up, follow a bunch of people, and then say, “It was just a bunch of people saying they like ice cream or going to work that day.”
Remember: social media tools like Twitter are like cell phones. You don’t get a cell phone and say, “Let me find numbers to plug into my phone to justify the use of this object”. You think of WHOM you would actually want to call and THEN you plug their number in. It’s the conversations that make the medium interesting.
Do you like certain blogs? Find out if the blog and the actually bloggers are on Twitter simply by Googling their name and “Twitter”. You can do the same for potential business partners, employees, celebrities, and anyone else. If they are boring, unfollow them or filter them out with tools like Seesmic or Tweetdeck. Putting the people ahead of the medium ensures you are actually making the most of a very useful communication tool.
Hugh MacLeod’s delivery is a little more um, to the point than mine would be. Some people need the message spelled out in black and white.
When a company first starts using social media, it’s like watching someone’s dad play with his first video camera. They seem to share everything in an attempt to “engage” just to show some results. That’s not a judgment, mind you. Everyone has to start somewhere and it’s just counterproductive to be mean about it.
The most powerful thing you can use social media for is listening. “Engaging” your audience without fully understanding who they are and how they relate to you is not engaging at all–it is as irritating as the ad that won’t stop blinking on the blog you are reading.
It is easier than you think to make people to want and need your product. Use tools like Tweetdeck, Google Alerts, RSS, Radian6, Community Insights or ScoutLabs and listen. Track terms in your industry, follow the players who are thought leaders in your space. Understand the current issues occurring in your industry. Create a product that goes above and beyond to solve these issues while not creating lots of other issues. Then show people your product. You can use an ad, a social media guru, whatever. The medium isn’t nearly as important as the message, which is “We are solving these issues you have.”
Listening and then acting upon what people need is far more powerful than any “engaging” you can do. I predict the companies that do it best will win out in 2010.
Being around so many talented professionals in the online space allows me to see what’s coming down the pike sooner than the average bear. I’ve been exposed to some projects that can only leave me optimistic for what the future has in store since working for Rackspace Hosting.
2009 was the year Iranians stood up to Ahmadinejad for all the world to see on YouTube and Twitter. 2009 also featured the first president to communicate via email lists and YouTube. We saw Sarah Palin leading the charge against him via Facebook. News like the Fort Hood shootings is regularly broken on Twitter far before it hits CNN.
Anyone who thinks social media will ever “slow down” or “go out of fashion” is simply ignoring empirical evidence to the contrary.
I often don’t talk about the technical side of this phenomenon. Since I don’t see many who do, I figured I would this time. Here are some trends that will fuel social media adoption and groundswell. If you think of others or have any additions/corrections to these, please comment.
1.) Dynamic frameworks like Tornado or Hadoop. Social networks are actually pretty hard to build. Why? If they get adopted, there is a lot of simultaneous traffic going on at once. Friendfeed decided to create a web application framework called Tornado to handle their traffic. They then were bought by Facebook, who decided to open source it for others to use on their social networking projects.
2.) Non-relational databases like Cassandra. A traditional database language like MySQL has a hard time handling all the calls back and forth from a web application. Remember the Fail Whale? That’s because when Twitter took off, there really wasn’t a lot of technology accessible to the average startup that could handle all the data going to and from their servers. As non-relational databases mature, it will be easier for social networks to handle heavier loads of data transfer at the same time.
3.) Cloud computing, cloud computing, cloud computing. If you build a solid application with a solid database, but your web hosting can’t handle the traffic, your site goes down. There is no such thing as unlimited hosting for a finite dollar amount. Cloud computing allows you to handle the spikes associated with the real time web without downtime or having to overbuy. If your site is pummeled by Twitter traffic, it will now be able to handle it.
4.) The software community builder that is the API. 2009 saw LinkedIn open its API. Facebook developers also gained ground into the walled garden that is Facebook and Twitter saw an explosion of applications utilizing their API. The easier we make it to digest social networks and use them the way we want (mobile or otherwise), the more they get used.
5.) Silos like Gnip. There is a lot of data going in and out of a social network. A single API can’t handle it, so applications can use silos to better handle all the people wanting access to data. For example, if you want to build a social network that pulls tweets about only certain topics, you would pull the data from Gnip who is pulling it from Twitter. This fuels niche social networks only looking for data about certain things.
Marketing is like a chess game. You need to set things up first before you can get your big wins.
That’s why I genuinely don’t focus on numbers until numbers are needed. I focus on what the late and great Elvis would say, “Taking Care of Business.”
The question we as marketers should not always be “What can I do to get more customers or traffic?” This is an instant gratification response. It feels great to log into Analytics and see that spike, but it isn’t necessarily going to last. The question should be “What messaging should we put across to make our company more sustainable and therefore profitable in the future?”
Think about it: if I put out one message that gets me 500 customers, great. That’s 500 customers I didn’t have before. BUT, if I put out a message that gets me the passionate lead architect or designer I needed to make my product great, that person has the potential of getting me thousands if not millions of customers with a fraction of the work. My message in a small, obscure community could get me one big investor who helps save my company. Who cares if only five people saw one particular message?
Each marketing message shouldn’t be about bringing in masses. It can be used to bring in employees, investors, partners, company cheerleaders who essentially do the selling for you, or press fanboys. You’re just communicating. As in chess, a big bold move too soon can make you vulnerable to attack from your enemy. Setting up the pieces first means you are in a better position to let numbers drive themselves.
Many “social media experts” will tell you to be everywhere. Leave comments on every post pertaining to your industry. Go to every meetup. Network with every professional. They tell you you can’t sleep to network and market yourself effectively.
I know people like this and I generally feel sad for them. I sleep quite well (ten hours if you let me), hang out with friends, and actually prefer going on vacation instead of every marketing or 2.0 conference imaginable so as to “brand” myself with this. Not only is networking everywhere pretty soul-sucking, being everywhere for anyone is actually dangerous for a brand. Now why is this?
It’s the same reason why actors should be choosy about the projects they are in. It’s the reason why Starbucks is now having to disguise itself as local chains to avoid public backlash. Scholars are calling this phenomenon “brand avoidance”. We see one face or one brand so frequently in too many places. I think the less technical, teenager-esque term for this is “trying too hard”.
Saying “no” to a speaking engagement, event, or networking event does not mean you’ll disappear into obscurity forever. On the contrary, it means that when you do show up, you’ll be more interesting because you’ll have had time to actually build things and/or learn. Being a “snob” of sorts will afford you the time you need to build a brand based on your merits, not just on your connections. People will also not get as sick of you as they are as they are of the five pound box of Honey Bunches of Oats that they bought from Costco four months ago.
Think of Apple. They go to absolutely no events, never leave comments on blogs, and yet people literally plan their days around their product launches. It’s not about being everywhere–it’s about being in the right places at the right times.
I caught this video of a BART police officer slamming a drunk man’s face into a window from Marshall Kirkpatrick’s Twitter feed:
While I understand that police work is extremely stressful and often requires officers to make life and death situations that I will rarely make in my lifetime, this looks like a scene from a bad action flick. I’m glad BART officials have decided to investigate.
This video was shot on a cell phone video camera. It goes to show you that you are never in control of your message unless you decide to operate in a complete vacuum, which will never happen.
There are so many blogs about how to use social media to promote your business. There seem to be more experts everyday. If it were up to me, there wouldn’t be social media experts. There would be “here’s how to make your customers rock with your product” experts. A social media expert isn’t going to teach your organization to care about what they do everyday.
This video is an example of someone caught in a rough situation who did the wrong thing. The BART officials could have put everyone on Twitter, taught them best practices, and this still could have happened.
Care about the people you deal with every day. Sympathize with what they are going through. Nothing will weather the storm of social media better than understanding the human condition.
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