Business
Stuff I like
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” - Martin Luther King, Jr.
I like quotes. Possible considered an addict. I enjoy quotes that require deep and repeated thought. The above is one.
Was the USA suppose to be like Disney?
I’ve been at Disney World all week long. This is my very first trip to Florida and Disney (yes, I was overly excited to finally get my ‘ears’!). My first initial OMG moment was within 20 min of driving in the enormous Walt Disney World Resort area. At every turn, I kept thinking “My God, think of the economic impact this place has on the state and it’s residents!”
Yes, my first initial ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ where probably a bit different than most people who just want to run and hug Mickey Mouse. Walt Disney World is a mini-nation. From the signs looking freshly painted, the mass transit systems, cut grass, hotels, restaurants, and the endless construction workers - Disney is an enormous contributor of economic stability.
By the second day, I started to wonder if our founding father’s imagined the US to mirror Disney World. If you stay in the resort area, all your essential needs are taken care of by your initial ticket.
Your ticket is like taxes: pays for mass public transit, housing, and public infrastructure.
Employment: From hotels, restaurants, bus drivers, engineers, and teachers - Disney employs all sorts of educational backgrounds. Most importantly, the emphasis in on the arts. College graduates of dramatics, language, art, and music are the most CHERISHED personnel.
Celebrating Diversity: Everywhere on Disney, diversity is celebrated and embraced. Endless handicap accessibility, nationalities, and religions are all represented and celebrated. It’s what American communities SHOULD be.
I had to wonder, if our founding father’s imagined America to be like what Walt Disney created. A community that lives harmoniously together.
Facebook: Love / Hate Relationship
Lately I have been feeling a bit annoyed with my Facebook friends. Unlike some other users, it has nothing to do with the systems itself -shit it’s free, who can complain right? It’s my own social cloud that is getting on my nerves.
First, their status updates seem like tag lines to soap operas.
The girls claim “Where would I be without him”, “I am your princess, you are my prince.” Who wants to read that?
Married couples hot tag lines are “Spent a great day with the baby, only two spit ups!”. What? Is that REALLY the most interesting piece of information in your life?
Then of course it always the unoriginal Monday and Tuesday updates, who just rotate “UGh it’s Monday!” and “Ya! It’s Friday!”. Makes me wonder if they have a career or still work hourly at Burger King.
Of course there are the several really cool things Facebook has brought my life. I’ve moved around quite a bit over the past 10 or so years, loosing a few good friends. Waking up this morning, Facebook left me a little love note in my email, stating yet another old friend found me. This time, it was one I wonder if died off and I missed the funeral.
So for every group of crappy, I really don’t know that person request (and some are darn persistent with their requests…like LEAVE me alone!), I find one golden friend from the past.
Thanks Facebook…I love you but damn you are annoying sometimes!
Wonderful Simplicity of Dogs
I know they say animals respond to the “tone” of your voice rather then the actual words, but I beg to differ. My best friend, will wag his tail even how groggerly I say the words “I love you.”.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could all act like dogs? Keeping life simple and to the basics. Always forgiving, loving, and life long companions, yet with our own tails to chase?
I Blog. Therefore I am a SuperHero!
You’re an industry success. You are an expert within the field. You’ve personal branded yourself in the “real” world. Everyone knows you, but not in social media. You start a blog to share your knowledge with others. You’re a SUPER HERO in the social media world!
How many times have we heard of professionals or industry experts have the expectation they will be another golden child of social media just by having a blog? To much of their frustration and dismay, they aren’t handed the crown immediately by social media junkies. They start to ask, “What am I doing wrong? I don’t get this Twitter thing. I have knowledge but why aren’t they listening?”
Social media experts come back with instructional blog posts of “How to use Twitter”, “Personal Branding”, and “Get a LinkedIn account”. Everyone listens, and sign up for all these accounts. What do they do: nothing. They sit there staring at it like Twitter gives you measles.
Real World vs. Social Media World
For lack of better terminology, let’s call people in corporate America who gains revenue from everything besides social media, as the “Real World”. “Social Media World” is the professionals who are building businesses centered around either developing social media platforms, evangelizing it, or as a consultant. Chris Brogan, Guy Kawasaki, Neenz, and Mark Zuckerb fall into this category.
What is extremely interesting is the number of real world professionals that try to cross over and expect immediate success. It just doesn’t happen. Regardless of how many bloggers and social media experts scream “Conversation” is the key, newbies still have the idea blogging once a week will equal instant success.
Pattern Of Social Media Immersion
There is a behavioral pattern of people entering social media. It typically starts with “I have a blog. Hear me roar!”. Great. Everyone has a blog including the neighbors’s pets. Realizing they are writing but no one is reading, they start searching out answers on how to have social media success.
They stumble upon Guy or Chris’s blog. Two of most successful social media professionals. They quickly get a Twitter account, LinkedIn, Facebook, and continue to blog. “I have a blog. I am Superhero!”. Again, they are lost because instead of looking at social media as a niche market, they just shove their blog posts at everyone.
Real world professionals don’t understand what it takes to have their success be transparent in the social media world. Why aren’t people engaging them? They get frustrated and pick one of the following paths:
1) Stick their nose up at social media and move back to real revenue making actions.
2) Hire a social media expert.
3) Keep blogging regardless if anyone is listening.
For the ones who have hired a social media expert, they probably are looking for someone to get their page views up. Beyond Hubspot’s king plan of meta tags, Google site maps, etc, there is the heart of what social media is about: conversation.
Professionals immersing themselves into the social media world, should treat it like it is a niche market. That’s all social media is. It is a niche market that maintains their own group values, decision making patterns, lifestyle similarities, morals, and behavioral patterns.
Traditional niche market groups require an outside agency to conduct research and population sampling to understand what drives the market. Social Media niche is putting it right out there in the open for you. You just have to listen and do it.
Niche Market Patterns
What is the key to breaking into the social media niche? Conversation. You can blog all day long, but if you are not joining the conversation on other blogs, Twitter, or LinkedIn, you will forever be invisible. Building a loyal customer, excuse me…readership base, is more than just keywords and meta tags. You have to go out like a street walker and talk to your customers…I mean readers. Engage them, entice them, yell profanities at them….Get their attention.
It takes a lot of work to stand on a street corner and start engaging. People like Chris Brogan make a CAREER of it. For the average real world professional, they struggle with work / social media balance. The social media niche really doesn’t care if you are sealing a multi-million dollar real estate deal today…they just care about the conversation on Twitter. Conversation is the key.
Get their attention, converse with them (OMG, actually reply on Twitter…REALLY!), and slowly start to build a presence. It is very hard for a real world professional to dominate the social media space since there are niche market experts who engage 24/7. Regardless, real world professionals have a wealth of information and knowledge to share. They can still have a substantial presence with some work and effort to join the conversation.
“Every substance is negatively electric to that which stands above it in the chemical tables,positively to that which stands below it” - Ralph Waldo Emerson
On the other side of the Social Media curve
Newsflash: Social Media is BIG.
Your response to that was probably less then ecstatic and more like “Um, ya. No Shit.” Because if you read this blog which is not SEO optimized, you probably have a blog of your own, Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, and YouTube account. You know what social media is, and you are engulfed in it everyday.
While working with several clients who cannot get their head around social media, I have noticed several trends. First, there is the social media in crowd and then there’s the “new-bees”.
Social media has become a virtual trade association. It’s a massive free networking event for social media users. If you weren’t blogging 5 years ago, didn’t get on Twitter in the first round, then you are not apart of the “inner” circle. Those who did, are deemed gurus or experts.
Sometimes I feel I am on the other side of the curve, trying to play catch up. If you read most of the web expert’s resumes or bio, they started blogging years ago, headed straight into web development, PR, or communications straight out of the gate from college. Now at the ripe age of 25-35, they are gods of social media. Like many others, I took a different route. My gate release was straight into the military. So while many of the social media “oldies” where blogging or working on web development during Sept 11th, I was apart of a 24 hour operations in support of OEF. Regardless of if I was there at the “beginning”, I am a user and player now. There are many like me, to which the social media cliches are failing to network with.
A virtual world built on minimal ROEs, now is inundated with social media acceptable web behavior. From how to effectively use Facebook, to what is the right way to use Twitter (who the fuck is in charge of the manual? You? FU! ), to what is a good “blog” and what is not, the rules of engagement of social media are growing exponentially. Sure they all started as suggestions, but now they are getting flung out there as rules. Chris Brogan hand slapped Twitter users from using auto reply messages.
Bloggers and Twitter users must now be careful not to seem to “self-seeking” but authentic. How is networking your skills using social media not authentic? Some people don’t want to share pictures of their kid’s dirty diapers on Flickr to portray “humanness”. Would you whip out the wallet pics at a trade show? Social media is nothing more than a big trade show for networking.
To the disbelief of most web savvy, there is a “real” world out that that doesn’t’ engage in social media. Even though more and more corporations are making a presence on the web, the majority of industry’s (with REAL skills) don’t need social media to survive. It’s about bricks and mortar. Making the sale, closing the deal, delivering product, following up, etc. Um, no where does social media help the average business in doing those fundamental business tasks. Those who started out from the beginning with Web 2.0, may want to be a bit more friendly to the new-bees. When it comes push to shove, the more people using social media, the more successful you are. Right? Might want to rethink the hand slapping instead embrace. Otherwise, people will quickly get turned off, and the CEO of Merck might just say FU.
If I asked who’s Pete Chasmore on Twitter, I would get an overwhelming response back. If I walk into the mall and asked, most people would provide a blank stare back. The web is still somewhat disconnected from mainstream society. It is still an industry, niche, and market. It does not reach everyone or all of us equally. Simultaneously, the young Gen Y or teens are growing up immersed in the web. They are the growing users of Facebook and YouTube. They will also change the web and how it is used. The social media experts of today won’t be old school news in 10 years. It’s a short term fame as developers create something new and in five years all the twenty somethings are using it, but the old school web 2.0 people aren’t. There will either be a shift in skill to move with the trends, develop your own platform (not just be a user), or embrace that one day you won’t be the guru but the learner instead.
To understand social media and how it is all interconnected doesn’t take a mechanical engineering degree. It’s as simple as making a presence, keeping a presence, and engaging in others. There’s no real brick being made by any one on the web except by the developers. Being a user doesn’t require much skill or intelligence. Amanda Chapel Tweets it best every time there is another news release of more layoffs “Company X just created 500 more full time bloggers.”
The Grand Illusion
Thanks Donnie J!
Dear Mr. President
Pepsi is promoting YouTube open letters to President Obama. Got something to say, upload it at http://www.youtube.com/user/refresheverything.
Definition of a “People Person”
What constitutes a person to a be a “People Person”? Several definitions include:
Dictionary.com : a person who likes interacting with others
Wiktionary.org: Someone who is happier or more skilled at dealing with people rather than things or concepts.
There is no argument that both definitions are similar, but I do believe there is room left for interpretation of what constitutes as “interacting”. There are two different ways in which a person can be defined as a “people person”, or more specific, reliance on people.
Type A: These individuals draw a great deal of self-confidence, pleasure, and source of meaning from interacting directly with other people. These would be the people who enjoy “touching” the lives of others directly or having a source of networked with others. Type A person may welcome other’s into their homes, schedule, or social network with ease and no hesitation. They actively seek out people to interact with. It’s a give and receive process of conversation or compliment resulting in fueling the “giver’s” self confidence and purpose of life.
Type B: These individuals do not feel the need to interact directly with large quantities or varieties of people. On the contrary, Type B people feel more comfortable coexisting in a large metropolitan area with many people around. They are more apt to live in an apartment or condo and feel comfortable sitting alone for coffee in a packed cafe then sitting with one other person in an empty park. Type B people may also be very private people. They do not require direct or close interaction with others to satisfy their sense of self-worth or confidence. Though they enjoy the energy of people around them, they tend to see a few close friends versus a large network.
Quite often we correlate the friendliest of people, to be considered a people person. It also takes a person who enjoys the sense of other’s within their proximity (but not necessarily directly interacting) to be a people person also. It would be obscene to draw the conclusion that a private person is not a people person. They might prefer anonymity, but feel most comfortable in a large group of strangers. Thus, it’s not just the “interaction” but varying degrees of proximity of people that defines what a people person is or is not.
Web 2.0: Blissfull Bullshit
Web 2.0 is an alphanumeric combination I am sick and tired of hearing about. There’s not one blog out there that doesn’t have it’s branded take on Web 2.0. By Dec 1st, I was sure I had heard all the theories, until recently.
Scriv’s blogpost entitled “Web 2.0 Was Bullshit“. was referred to me by another Web 2.0 addict. Ironically, it was sent in a very non Web 2.0 manner - email. Scriv’s has interesting points on why the Web 2.0 idea fed us the bullshit card. Is Web 2.0 worthless?
The significance of partaking in Web 2.0 social networking is dependent on your business focus and the goals you are trying to obtain. Being realistic, any business who wants to be more than the local barber needs to have a website. The next generation of consumers probably have never opened up a telephone book. They Google it. So yes, a web presence is essential today.
Starting several years ago, with the mommy blog boom, companies are emphasizing more and more marketing online. It’s extremely cheap if you consider the right placement for an ad could reach more diverse audience than say your local paper. In this sense, Web 2.0 is not bullshit. Companies are trying to create brand cultures, most successfully done through using Facebook groups, blogs, Twitter, etc. If a company wants to attract a broad customer base, be seen as an industry expert, or “self-brand” the individual, they have to engage the web community. It’s a fact not bullshit.
Scriv’s believes the only great thing about Web 2.0 was all the “free” applications. Are they really FREE? Nope.
From the user end, Twitter, Alltop, BNet, Facebook, MySpace, WordPress, Blogger, etc, are all free. Flip the spectrum to the developer’s side, and that’s where you find the real cost of doing business in Web 2.0. The only way these sites are hoping to make a dime is through advertising, and that is damn risky. For the developer, if web analytics numbers decrease, your advertising revenue follows suit. Where does one recoup costs? Ouch…
Business must accept a Web 2.0 presence is essential in maintaining competitiveness. It also means incurring the costs of a web developer, blogger, server space, etc. Blogging may be free to Scriv’s, who probably isn’t flipping the bill for hosting or maintaining the site. Businesses such as Hubspot can offer you analytics, but you still have to do the work. Businesses shouldn’t expect massive return, maintaining a Web 2.0 presence is now just another cost of doing business. Suck it up.
In all reality, Web 2.0 isn’t all bullshit but it sure didn’t live up to expectations. I think it furthered a wave of revolution of how people network, brand marketing, and the popular selling of “knowledge” versus tangible product or service. Web 2.0 didn’t clarify, streamline, or replace “Google”, instead it has the potential to over complicated your personal and professional life.
