Network Solutions - Small business conversations and working together for small business success » Humor

In Case of Emergency, This Space Intentionally Left Blank

Joe Loong — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:00:07 +0000

Right off the bat, I’m going to admit that this is pretty much a filler entry. I’ve been mostly laid up this week, working from home because I’m stricken with something that’s either a sinus infection or the flu (variety unknown).

I thought about turning my illness into an entry discussing how the CDC and other public health entities are using social media to monitor and respond to conversations about H1N1 and other health topics. Or maybe fashioning some clever way to connect the metaphor of viral distribution back to actual viruses.

But then I realized that with my clogged sinuses turning my mind to mush, the deepest contemplation I’ve pursued recently has involved gazing into used tissues. Prodigious work, no doubt, but not very useful to the world at large.

Similarly, I looked into, then abandoned a few lines of inquiry relating to physical status updates and social status broadcasting and… something. (It pretty much trails off from there.)

Even looking into that old standby, my heretofore-reliable slushpile of socially bookmarked del.icio.us links, yields a scattershot collection, nothing that I could unify into a coherent theme, especially in my semi-addled state.

So, instead, I will talk about the importance of redundancy and backups when it comes to your social media efforts. (And I’m not talking about hardware or software here — I’m referring to people.)

Here in this blog, I’m fortunate to be surrounded by great bloggers and a superb management team who can pick up the slack when I or another blogger falls behind in posting, whether it’s due to travel or conferences or getting knocked down (in this case) by a literal virus.

For your own efforts, you want to minimize single points of failure for your social media monitoring and communications. At the very minimum, it means making sure that administrative rights and passwords are distributed (in a secure fashion), so that in the event of the dreaded “hit by a bus” scenario, your operation doesn’t grind to a halt.

From the authoring side: In a less-imperfect world, you’d have a diversity of voices, blogging, Twittering, and otherwise representing multiple aspects of your organization, who can take over when you’re unavailable. After all, in addition to helping to provide backup in times of crisis, building in redundancy and extra capability also helps to distribute the load in more routine times.

But what if you’re a one-man (or woman) band, where you’re doing everything yourself? That (to employ a well-worn rhetorical delaying device), is a great question. I don’t have a great answer, other than to say that setting and maintaining expectations through transparency and honest communications (see again: first paragraph) is probably your best bet.

Also, remembering that microblogging, or more passive, less authorship-intensive lines of communication like social linksharing or retweeting can help fill the gaps between your more robust works.

Finally, you can always do this — throw things open to your audience. Hey, what do you think — what coping strategies do you employ when you’re pressed for time but you need to feed the beast? Please leave a comment below.

Now excuse me while I go gaze into a tissue.

Recap of the #GrowSmartBiz Conference

Steve Fisher — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:00:52 +0000

Last week those of you who are regular subscribers to the blog know that the first GrowSmartBiz conference was held on Sept 29 in Washington, DC. By all accounts it was a successful event full of great content and valuable lessons for small business owners. One of my favorite things was that they gave you a branded thumb drive with all the conference content as well as more that wasn’t on the agenda. That alone is a great resource plus it saved a ton on printing costs and environmental impact.

Here is a comprehensive recap for the GrowSmartBiz Conference here at Network Solutions and from all over the Internet:

Watch the entire conference on-demand over at Livestream (who did an amazing job):

http://www.livestream.com/networksolutions/

Twitter Coverage:

Go to SEARCH.TWITTER.COM and use THIS search string:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=gsbiz OR growsmartbiz OR #growsmartbiz

Coverage from the Grow Smart Business Blog (Blog Series):

GrowSmartBiz Conference

Coverage from Solutions Are Power:
GrowSmartBiz Conference Recap: Integrating Traditional Marketing with Social Media by Ken Yeung
GrowSmartBiz Conference Recap: Raising Capital with Effective Finance Strategies by Ken Yeung
GrowSmartBiz Conference Recap: Driving Small Business Performance with Marketing & Innovation by Ken Yeung

Coverage from around the Web:

Online News Coverage:

SMBs, startups find growth support in first GrowSmartBiz Conference

Marketing Expert Bob London to Participate in Network Solutions ® GrowSmartBiz Conference, Focusing on Small Business Marketing & Innovation

Examiner.com – The DC event of the year for Small Business Owners – GrowSmartBiz Conference

GrowSmartBiz Conference

GrowSmartBiz conference provides insights into small business best practices

Tech Bisnow: HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Blog Coverage:

The Cascade Effect – GrowSmartBiz Wants Your Story

Small Business Trends – GrowSmartBiz Conference and Contest – Goodies

Chris Abraham Links for 2009-08-11

Inside Out Branding: Bob London to speak at first GrowSmartBiz conference on 9/29/; keynote is Wired’s Chris Anderson

Just for Small Business: Put the GrowSmartBiz Conference on Your Radar Screen (and Enter the Contest)

A Must –Attend: Grow Smart Biz Conference

SMC:DC: Upcoming Events – Fall 2009

Free Agent Writer: Wired Editor-in-Chief to Keynote DC GrowSmartBiz Conference

Social Fish: GrowSmartBiz Conference

Small Biz Labs: GrowSmartBiz Conference DC

The Nash Chronicles: Shannon Nash will be speaking on the Raising Capital with Effective Finance Strategies panel

Blogwrite for CEOs: Q & A With Chris Anderson, Best Selling Author of FREE

InkThinker: EVENT: GrowSmartBiz Conference, September 29 in Washington, DC – Keynote Speaker Chris Anderson of Wired

The AIW Blog: Network Solutions Presents the GrowSmartBiz Conference – September 29 in Washington, DC

East Coast Blogging: GrowSmartBiz Conference

Posts about Small Business Info as of Saturday, September 5, 2009

Chris Anderson Live in DC at the GrowSmartBiz Conference

9 Reasons to Sign up for the GrowSmartBiz Conference

GrowSmartBiz Conference – Helping Small Business Owners Grow Their Business

Reston Limo Blog: GrowSmartBiz Conference

Waxing UnLyrical: DC Conference Mania

Chef Vinod: Grow Smart Business Seminar

Business in General Blog: Grow Smart Business Conference – Washington DC Area
View from 17th and Riggs: Grow Smart Business Conference in DC – with Coupon Update!

SCORE Women’s Success Blog: Small Business: Grow Your Biz Event in DC on 9/29

SCORE Ask an Expert Blog: Small Business: DC Event September 29^th

Powder Room Diaries: GrowSmartBiz Conference

Chris Abraham: GrowSmartBiz in DC with Chris Anderson

Waxing UnLyrical: DC, #GrowSmartBiz Is Here

Photographic Department: Live Photoblogging GrowSmartBiz – Morning Session

Web Wahala: Rebroadcast Of The #GrowSmartBiz Conference From Network Solutions

Katie Rogers Writes: Chris Anderson of “Wired” mag speaks at GrowSmartBiz DC

Hot Mommas Project: #24a Techniques for Learning to Improve Your Business – Building a Million Dollar Business Part Time

NextGenWeb: Grow Smart Business Conference Connects Experts With Entrepreneurs

Jen Consalvo: growsmartbiz & a brand for small businesses

Waxing UnLyrical: Why GrowSmartBiz Rocks

Capital Communicators Group: GrowSmartBiz Conference: Takeaway #1

Mayra Ruiz blog: 2 state lines *and* 3 metro lines to bring you my #growsmartbiz recap(s)

New Media Consults: #GrowSmartBiz Conference: Top 20 Tweet Takeaways

Small Business Blog: A Wealth of Information for Small Business Owners

#GrowSmartBiz Presentation Slides and Video: 10 Rules for Killer Business Cards

Steve Fisher — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 20:00:51 +0000

So I got asked a few months ago to present at the GrowSmartBiz Conference and I suggested to do something on business cards. I am sure many people were like “ok….” It can be a dry subject unless you find the examples of business cards I did and relay some solid and clever rules to create “Killer” business cards.

This is a presentation that is usually given in 30 minutes and I did it in about 10. It was rapid fire and from the Twitter stream and the high fives I got, it went over really well. For those of you that could not make it, I embedded the presentation that came on everyone’s thumb drive below and further down is the video presentation of the session. Leave a comment and tell me what you think.

10 Rules For Killer Business Cards Slideshare

View more presentations from Steven Fisher.

Video Presentation of “10 Rules for Killer Business Cards”
SKIP TO 4:35 past the raffle to get to my smiling face and enjoy.

About Steve Fisher:

Steve currently is Managing Partner of AppSolve. In its 10th year, Appsolve specializes in user experience design, enterprise web development and online community management. Through AppSolve, he works with Network Solutions to manage its online small business community. Prior to that he was founder and CEO of Slipstream Air, a software provider to the private air travel industry. It was sold in 2008 to JIT Airline Resources, which rebranded as Slipstream Aviation Software. Steve has also held key leadership positions at Global Network Solutions, OnSite Technologies, IKON, USConnect, Ryland and Wells Fargo.

He has published several e-books on Small Business Management, User Experience, Online Marketing and Innovation. Currently, he is working on his first book, “101 Rules for Entrepreneurs” slated for a Spring 2010 release.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in Business from University of Baltimore and on a personal note he is a private pilot, musician and concert photographer. He cur¬rently resides in Columbia, MD, USA.

Marketers Killed the Internet as a Medium for Introverts

Joe Loong — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:00:27 +0000

Recently, I’ve seen Myers-Briggs Personality Type badges floating around on Facebook and other social Web sites. I haven’t retaken the test in a long time, but I used to be an INTJ (basically, an introvert), and I have no reason to think that’s changed in any meaningful way.

It did, however, get me thinking about how the Internet changed as it got mainstreamed, to the point where it’s not as friendly to introverts as it used to be.

The Early Conceit/Delusion of Content Meritocracy

In its beginnings as a consumer medium, when the Internet was starting to really get hot — I’m thinking early- to -mid-90s, when the first graphical Web browser, Mosaic, came out (1993), as did Nicholas Negroponte’s Being Digital (1995) — there was this notion the Net would be a pure, disintermediated meritocracy, where good content would rise to the top, and the creators of good content would be recognized and gain currency (prestige, influence) on that basis.

For someone who tends towards introversion, the written word, and extreme laziness, this was a golden opportunity — just push out good content, and your genius would be recognized, with no need to hustle, market, or pitch. (This was my personal interpretation of things at the time, and it looks incredibly naïve now, just like those infomercials for making millions on the Internet by putting up a Web site. But I don’t think my naïveté was so incredibly far from the norm, especially when there still weren’t that many people online.)

We know how accurate that vision turned out to be. (It still applies a little bit, as long as your content involves cats.)

The Marketers Arrive

I finally buried and staked that particular delusion in 2004, with the arrival of Digg, where we saw that good links didn’t stand a chance against okay links that were supported by extrovert-friendly promotional strategies, like building networks of Digg friends for link logrolling (i.e. “digg my link and I’ll digg yours”), tailoring your content to be Digg-friendly (e.g. short articles, small words, lots of lists), going out and actually promoting your content, and other ways of gaming the system.

Basically, what we consider to be part of the online marketer’s standard toolkit these days.

It’s Not Really the Marketers’ Fault

Despite my trolltastic headline blaming “marketers” (see: Tailoring your content), the need to do marketing and promotion for your content wasn’t caused by marketers, it was simply a need that they came to fill. With the competition for attention that came about with the democratization of the Net, it was inevitable.

And we keep seeing mini-cycles with each new product and platform that comes out: people discover it, use it, it gets popular, and then people have to dig into the bag of tricks in order to stand out. Look at the blogosphere and Twitter, where first movers of quality were able to get noticed and rewards (including book deals), whereas now net.fame is increasingly the province of previously-established celebrity and brands.

Of course, this isn’t to say that the Internet isn’t dead for introverts, just that they can’t expect the world to beat a path to their door just because they put up a good piece of content. (Which was a conceit in the first place, however much I might pine for it.) So if you have something you truly want to be seen (which makes you something less than a true introvert, anyways), you have champions who are extroverts, be an extrovert yourself, or at least be able to fake it in certain contexts.

It is the way of the world, just like there aren’t any ugly pop stars anymore (save for a few with, shall we say, non-traditional good looks). Although it is interesting to watch the outliers, those systems that are still almost totally meritocratic — say, something like the MacArthur Fellows Program (the Genius Grant folks), which features a totally opaque nomination and selection process. Can you imagine the cluster-chaos that would ensue if it featured open nominations? The mind reels.

Was the Internet ever a content meritocracy? Do introverts have to stop acting like introverts to get noticed online? Leave a comment.

Idealized Avatars, Personas, and Perfect Robot Bodies

Joe Loong — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 20:00:05 +0000

I thought I was going to be all clever by talking about a trio of Hollywood movies (out now or soon) that share a common theme of people controlling proxies to interact with the world, then using that as a springboard into a metaphorical look at how we use our online presences… but then Popular Mechanics kinda beat me to it.

However, since their article focuses on the technologies behind controlling robot and virtual proxies through brain-computer interfaces, I’m going to charge ahead anyway.

Now, the movies in question are Avatar (a super-hyped flick by Titanic’s James Cameron that I have no idea if I’ll see or not), Gamer (out now, meh), and Surrogates (which, judging from the trailer, stars Bruce Willis’s toupee).

My knowledge of the movies is utterly superficial, though they all involve people controlling other bodies, be they robot, cloned, or belonging to someone else. In Avatar, it’s for the purposes of exploring a hostile alien environment; in Gamer, it’s for gladiatorial games, and Surrogates, it’s for living a risk-free life in an idealized robot body.

Of the three concepts, Surrogates seems to the oddest to me. After all, if you’re seamlessly remote-controlling a robot body out in the real world, with all the sensory inputs fed directly into your brain, why bother with a robot body at all — why not just cut out the middleman and create a wholly virtual environment, indistinguishable from the real one? (Because that would be The Matrix, that’s why.)

Maybe it’s addressed in the movie. After all, whether it’s via holodeck, hallucination, or virtual reality, living in an idealized artificial world is pretty-well worn sci-fi territory.

The Metaphorical Bit

Right, so here’s the part where I try to tie this back to online personas today.

Actually, we have to start earlier, back in the text-only days of USENET newsgroups, IRC chat and e-mail listserves, where people were only known by their words. For a brief time, we weren’t judged by physical appearance. Oh, we still judged each other — just not by looks (it was a good time to be a good writer) — and I’m not as blinded by nostalgia to think that this represented a time where only our “true personalities” mattered — the personality you presented online was likely an idealized version (or at least an aspirational one) of yourself, and may or may not have borne any resemblance to your actual personality (the “avatar” bit, before there were avatars).

This period lasted until people decided they might like to meet in real life (so, about a month, probably, for any given geographically-based community.)

Moving forward to today, with images and video, while on one hand it may be harder to keep people on the Internet from knowing you’re a dog, on the other hand, we still see people using images and avatars to present idealized versions of themselves.

A few years back, I came up with a theory that the hotness of your online avatar was inversely proportional to your hotness in real life (that is to say, the hotter your avatar, the less attractive you actually were), which I don’t think is going out on a limb. Again, it’s a way to present your idealized or aspirational image to the world. (When companies do this, it’s called “branding,” which is why I’m still amused by the concept of personal branding.)

Anyway, I don’t have a neat bow to tie all this together, other than to say that I’m not sure that future generations will distinguish between online and offline personas, though at some level they’ll still continue to use avatars or personas to present idealized or aspirational images of themselves to the world. (Until we get those direct brain-to-brain connections — it’ll probably be hard to hide your true self when that happens.)

Does any of this make sense? Please leave a comment, using the persona of your choice.

Deaugmenting Reality: When Less Is More

Joe Loong — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 12:00:01 +0000

Following up on my entry about augmented reality, I did a little more reading and found the concept that deftly summarized what I’d been clumsily chasing: the Virtual Continuum, where you have the completely real on one end of the spectrum, the completely virtual on the other, and in the middle, a Mixed Reality, with pieces of the actual and the virtual worlds blended together:

Great, huh? So what’s it have to do with online communities and social media? Assuming that our connections to the hive mind (the shared community of people, knowledge, awareness, and experience present in our social networks) will only get stronger and more ubiquitous over time, it’ll probably be useful to see how that connection is going to work, and how it’s going to change how we interact with each other.

(Not that I have any notion of being right about this. Remember, some folks initially thought that the telephone’s primary use was going to be for broadcasting concerts and speeches into homes. No one can screw up futurists’ predictions better than people.)

One thing I want to take on with our current conception of AR is the idea that “more information” (adding contextual data over our sensory input) automatically means “better information,” leading to our being better informed, with stronger interactions, and ultimately making better decisions, etc.

Leaving aside fears of technology dependence and instead shifting to concerns about the limits of multitasking, distraction, and continuous partial attention, I think that AR, done poorly (think “the typical YouTube user’s implementation of annotations”), brings a very real danger of information overload, and that we should stop to see if there are any instances where we should stick with abstraction over reality.

Consider the fighter pilot. I recall an interview with some Vietnam-era combat pilots, who upon taking to the sky, would immediately start turning off alarm buzzers, bells, and other warnings, so that when they entered the chaos of a dogfight or ground attack, they wouldn’t be distracted from the truly important stuff.

Jump ahead a few technological generations, where in the latter part of the Cold War, there was a concept for an in-cockpit virtual reality display, which completely replaced an external view of the real environment, with a projected view of simplified geometric shapes and color-coded flight paths marking safe corridors through enemy air defense.

This was as much an artifact of the state of late 80s computer graphics technology as anything else, but it also sought to reduce information overload, by replacing reality with a simplified virtual view. In the nature of efficiency, it removed everything except the core bits of information needed to complete the mission.

(Of course, there’s a trust issue of relying completely on a virtual view, but that already happens today. For example, submariners have nothing but a virtual view; even pilots, in certain situations, are instructed to trust their instruments over their eyes, because of optical illusions that can lead to fatal crashes.)

What benefits might a deaugmented reality view of the world have for people who aren’t combat pilots? This could easily fly off into absurdity (e.g. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’s Peril Sensitive Sunglasses, that black out your vision at the hint of danger so you don’t see anything that might disturb you), though one idea I’d had is a real-world version for photosensitive epileptics — they’d detect triggering frequencies of light, and block them out. Or, a simplified view of crowded social situations, where people are replaced by color-coded silhouettes, noting people to approach or avoid.

(Perhaps I’m merely making a case for high-tech blinders. But even blinders can be useful sometimes.)

Anyway, I just wanted to throw out the concept of deaugmented reality, and the idea that sometimes you can add by subtracting. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

Social Broadcasting: Where You Are vs. Where You Aren’t

Joe Loong — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:30:26 +0000

I’d like to revisit the implications of socially-broadcasting your location and status. Previously, I looked at social broadcasting from a security perspective — namely, the notion that by telling people where you are, you’re also telling people where you aren’t, which could open you up to shenanigans by ne’er-do-wells, or even crime (as in the “I’m on vacation, please break in to my house” scenario).

A similar thing can happen in a realm where the stakes aren’t so high, but the terrain is just as perilous. It’s a convoluted land of complex social norms, finely-calculated relationships, and polite fictions: the public social calendar.

This is social broadcasting in its most literal sense — you’re broadcasting what you’re up to, socially.

I’ve talked before about how publicly-viewable invitations have changed how people use RSVPs (especially how they’ve changed from actual indicators of intention, to signifiers of endorsement or aspiration.)

Now, when you throw public status updates, especially mobile status updates, into the mix, you add in a layer of self-accountability to your public responses.

At least, in potential — I don’t know that anyone is so aware of other peoples’ actions in real life. Or I hope not — it seems petty.

Here’s the scenario — previously, if you were invited to an event to which you didn’t want to attend (or you had a few competing events to choose from), you could beg off politely, give an excuse (washing my hair / food poisoning / just going to stay in and watch TV), and no one would know the difference (unless, of course, you ran into someone who later ratted you out).

Now, though, unless you’re really self-disclipined, you might find that posting an otherwise-innocuous status update causes you to out yourself in real-time (to say nothing about getting tagged in someone else’s photo later on) — by telling people where you are, you’re also telling the hosts you snubbed where you aren’t. And if you used a lame excuse or outright lie, you can bust yourself and cause some awkward moments down the line.

Call it truth and consequences.

We’ve seen this in work contexts (say, getting busted after skipping out of work to go to a Halloween party) as part of the broader theme of getting into trouble for posting stuff online.

Anyway, there are a couple of paths you can take to avoid this problem. The first is discretion (or alternately, obfuscation) and being really careful or ambiguous about what you socially broadcast. I don’t see this as viable in the long-term, since as we’ve seen, discretion tends to go out the window, especially after a few drinks.

The next course, of course, is transparency (it’s always transparency with us social media types, isn’t it?) — when you’re honest, you don’t need to worry about keeping your lies straight. Of course, you want to be diplomatic as well; there are many ways to say “I’m holding out for a better offer” while sparing feelings.

The last method is disinformation — deliberately broadcasting false information about where you are and what you’re doing. I’m not sure why anyone would want to do this, unless they were crafting an alibi, shamelessly social climbing, or had really touchy friends.

Obviously, this isn’t a new phenomena — it’s just that social media and social broadcasting make these potential faux pas so much more accessible to everyone.

Anyway, I’ll throw it out to you — as the host of an event, have you ever paid close attention to what the ingrates who declined your invitation did in lieu of accepting your hospitality? Or, as an attendee, have you ever got busted by a status update that got back to the host? Please leave a comment.

Like A Kid In A Comic Book Store

Mike Dougherty — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 15:31:02 +0000

Visit any store with a child.
I was sitting in my local Barnes & Nobles trying to think about the next marketing topic I could write about, that would be relevant to a small business owner, when I saw a kid all of ten wander across the comic book rack as his mother perused the magazines next to it. I watch as this kid, wide-eyed and giddy, scanned the rack of brightly colored superheroes overwhelmed with choices. He looked back to his mom, beaming with excitement, and asked if he could have one.

“You can only choose one. Which one do you want,” she asked.

The boy chose the one that directly in front of him. The one he could easily reach out to and take without any fear. He was eager to tear open the pages of whatever adventure awaited beneath the cover.

“That one? Are you sure?”

He nodded and they were off. I don’t know if he ever enjoyed the comic, but I saw, for that moment, he was completely confident and excited about his choice.

Right then and there, I had my topic.

The rush hour of small business marketing.
With so many people reaching out for your prospective clients’ attention, it’s getting harder and harder to see yourself as the clear choice. It is easy to get overwhelmed with choosing where to advertise, how to cast the widest net, and what your message will be to get their attention. It can be frustrating with every niche item salesman suggesting what bit of swag will be sure to lure in that potential client, the local print shop touting the latest sale on brochures and postcards, networking events crowded with the same people over and over again, and yet have you noticed what you want…seems to be right where you need it?

I’m not advocating you ditch any of the tools above, but simply recognize them for what they are. They are tools and avenues to get you to the next prospective client. But if these avenues are backed up with rush hour like traffic fighting for attention, why would you take them? Because they are safe bets? Because everyone is doing it? Because you are a bit afraid to feel like you wasted your all ready limited resources on an unproven tactic?

But what if you take these choices and you end up with a closet full of key chains, boxes of never seen brochures, and networking events where you end up collecting the same business cards from the same people just on different days? Isn’t THAT a waste of your valuable all ready limited resource?

Be where you’ll get the most eyes.
Instead of trying to create tactics and plans that brings them to you, try getting out and going to them. Seriously, go where your future long term customers will be. It could feel awkward at first, but if you’re the first person to tap the well of uninterrupted visibility then you’ve got nothing to loose.

The best example I’ve seen of this was just yesterday at an office where I am doing some contracting. In their kitchen, right on the refrigerator door, was an advertisement for a Babysitter. The design was clean, clear, and simple. There was a pocket, made of folded paper, stapled to it with business cards sticking out. The business cards were even clearer than the flyer. They simply read, in a welcoming font,

“Nicole.
Babysitter.”

And below that were her phone number and email.

This wasn’t done in an off the shelf font, but it was neatly presented and easy to read. No fluff designs or overly wordy content. The business card laden flyer was close to eye level with anyone going to get their lunch.

Nicole tapped a market of an office made up of probably 60% of her chosen clients. She went right to where she would get the most eyes on her services.

Needless to say, I’ve seen Nicole’s simple business card holder refilled at least twice since the advertisement went up.

Be brave with your limited resources.
Don’t be afraid to take chances once in a while. Get out there and go after your prospective clients with the same excitement you started your business. After all, they are your clients after all, right? Instead of the next tried and true moderately successful “everyone’s seen it, done it, and got the t-shirt from it” tactic, get a little creative with your limited resources.

If you’re an auto detailing company, offer to wash cars in the parking lot of your local office building for free in exchange for letting people know about your services. If you’re a business coach, give away coupons for a free session at a networking event for small business owners. If you’re an author with a new book to peddle, go to where your reader will be and give out free sample chapters of your book with info on where to get the rest of the great, amazing best seller to be. What ever it is that you do, be bold, be creative and be fearless in whatever your marketing endeavor will be. Failures will happen, but successes will as well. Be more focused on the later and conscious of what caused the former.

If you’re wondering, yes, I’ve seen the aforementioned suggestions done, but those business owners wanted the clients and weren’t afraid to take a calculated risk to reap a little long term reward.

But the real question is…are you?

As all ways…stay wicked.

Just Because You Give It Away…

Mike Dougherty — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 12:00:35 +0000

The most amazing life lesson in marketing.
I do some contracting work for a non-profit and recently thee non-profit created a campaign, targeting a small section of their local membership based, via their website to support their mission. The campaign was clear, very honorable in its intentions, and was giving something away a gift thanks. And this wasn’t just a cheap give away item. It had value both financially and usewise. The campaign had all the makings of a successful campaign if the appropriate effort was put into it.

Overnight something wholly amazing happened.
They opened their email box one morning a month into the passively pushed campaign and found they had, honest to Bob, over 7,000 submissions requesting to be a part of the campaign. Emails poured in from all over the nation taking part in the submission. We all clamored to the marketers’ desk to see this with our own eyes. An email box so overloaded with requests it called to mind the commercial of the new business that puts its store online and the orders just keep going up, and up, and up. Just like the emails that continued to pour in.

From joy to panic.
Some thought it was spam. Some were excited at the potential of something they did being that “viral”. Some freaked out at how they were going to service all of the requests with a limited supply.

With one of their web team helping, I started looking through some of the emails to see if we could detect signs of spamming. We couldn’t find any that were that obvious. The submission forms were filled out were each unique, accurate, and different, that the only thing that kept the curiosity of it being spam was the frequency of how these came in. It was roughly twenty emails a minute with each second a part from each other.

The Google Search is strong with this one.
So there we sat, debating on what to do, and I thought “Google will have the answer”. I threw the name of the campaign between some quotes in Google’s search box and hit send. My screen, and Google’s Search results, were maxed out with Freebie Sites, sites that do nothing but list where to find, and how to get, free stuff online, listing the “Free Gift” that came with campaign and how to get it.

I figured, “if it’s already this deep into Google…where else could it be”. I turned m search to the tools of Social Media. The links started popping up on Twitter with a link back to the directions on how to get the “Free Gift”. It was in different spots all throughout Social Media.

In a very short time, less then ten hours, the “Free Gift” had spread like wild fire. It was time for some damage control.

From excitement to frustration
From there, I created a timeline of when the first Freebie Site listed the campaign, which linked off of it, when other posts picked it up, and cross referenced it with when the emails came in and how often they spiked. Yeah, I know, I’m a geek. My wife reminds me constantly. Sure enough, the spike in email requests coincided with each time the campaign appeared on a Freebie Site.

This wasn’t spam after all, but an army of people who collectively thought the “Free Gift” was worth their time to blog about the “Free Gift” and share how sign up for it. They rallied their own troops, got the message out, and took action on it. This was truly an example of the kind of Viral Marketing companies’ dream of!

Yet notice nothing in that last paragraph talks about the connection with the campaign, the belief in the goal, sharing the message of the campaign over the free gift, or any positive remarks about the non-profit’s effort?

With learning that submissions were still flooding in, we closed down the submission request box. I sent emails to the Freebie Sites letting them know what the intention of the campaign was and how we hoped they update their info. Some did and thanked us. Some ignored us. I sent a few emails to those who submitted letting them know what happened. Some did and thanked us. Some got frustrated and said that they did what the website said and they wanted their “Free Gift” anyway. Some ignored us.

The moral of the story, kids.
This outcome was not what they expected, or intended, when they created their marketing campaign. They just wanted to add a little value for being a part of it. Those online saw the value not in supporting the campaign, but just filling out whatever they needed to get the free item they wanted.

Rather than give a long, lengthy explanation, here are the top five things the non-profit quickly learned:

Be proactive on learning the reason once you find a negative reaction to your campaign.a. You could have unintentionally created it. If you sit back and blame the people doing the very thing you asked them to, but for a different reason than you intended…you get nowhere.
Accept the mistake, learn from it, and work with it instead of running away from it.a. It’s safe to say, that on the next campaign this will be something that will be brought up and avoided.
Don’t give into our initial fear.a. Fear can cause you to assume your first reaction is the best one. Sometimes that’s not the case. Imagine what would happen if they thought they were spammed instead of doing the research?
Find out what worked, what didn’t, and, depending on your outcome, how you can either duplicate that later on or never let it happen again.Clearly the free gift had value to people. Is there something that they could leverage in this?
When people ask for your free gift that does not mean they are interested in you.a. Free gifts are great. They little items, that shouldn’t break the bank, that if well done should spark conversation or curiosity. They should not be a crutch to get people interested in you or your company.

I say, give “Free Gift” away, but don’t let the value of the gift be greater than the message. There are some really big marketing lessons in this that came to light. What, life lessons, have you learned from you marketing experiences?

Until next time, stay wicked.

If you liked it, please Tweet it.

Size Matters: The Long and the Short of Social Communication

Joe Loong — Mon, 11 May 2009 20:30:11 +0000

There’s a famous quote on brevity, usually attributed to Mark Twain, though actually written by Blaise Pascal: “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.” It’s based on the observation that writing more words actually takes less time, because you can just open the floodgates, whereas writing fewer words requires more time, since you have to edit and wordsmith to pare away the deadweight.

My personal experience holds this to be true, though I’m also trying to reconcile it with another truth: Online communications are almost universally short, and take almost no time to create — especially real-time communications like IMs and synchronous chat.

Look at it from the perspective of conversation — a person who goes on and on without giving the other person a chance to respond is giving a speech — a monologue. If the listener isn’t able to respond, even if it’s just interjecting a quasi-verbal “uh-huh” every so often, it stops being a conversation. So IMs, SMS and other forms of text chat are much more similar to verbal speech than traditional written works (where the author is the only party “speaking”), thus leading to shorter lengths.

160 Characters: More Than Enough? [EOM]
Now last week’s LA Times article, “Why text messages are limited to 160 characters,” exposed some of the rationale that the creators of the SMS standard used for their 160-character text limit. By analyzing random sentences and questions, they found that 160 characters was usually enough to express complete and useful thoughts, and that postcards often topped out even lower, at 150 characters.

We can see this at work in e-mail, when people send out an ultra-short message that fits entirely in the subject line. Hence the “EOM” (End Of Message) convention you see in some places — saves people the trouble of opening an empty e-mail.

Of course, this raises the question of why use e-mail to send that message in the first place? Before Twitter and other short-form messaging services, e-mail was the only game in town (depending on your groups’ adoption of IM, that might also have been an option, though sending out an IM usually indicates the desire to start a conversation).

Showing vs. Growing in Communication
Anyway, suitability of a messaging medium is pretty dependent on personality and personal preference, in addition to any objective measures of length, reliability, synchronicity, presence, etc., so I’ll just end this with a few additional, partially-baked thoughts on length & communication:

* On the writing side, it’s easier to start long and then refine your way down to short as needed. Ideally, you want to be as concise as you can be, while still conveying the information you need, to prevent excessive back-and-forth communication. If you need to iterate and go back and forth, have a conversation.

* On the speaking side, it’s better to start short — if the listener wants to get more detail, they can ask for more. It’s a more useful skill for a speaker to be able to boil something down to its core, instead of blathering on to someone who isn’t interested in hearing the detail.

Twitter is kind of a funny beast in this regard, because it’s both public messaging (chat, or chat-like) and microblogging (which is more of a publishing experience). This crossing of communication cultures may be why Twitter evokes such strong feelings from lovers and haters.

Anyway, whether you’re a long-former or a short-former, please leave a comment below.