The most hilarious thing anyone's ever sent me!
Someone just sent this to me and I rolled around on the floor for 10 minutes laughing. Has anyone else received this? You can go to cnnbcvideo.com to send one to your friends. Whether you’re an Obama fan or not you’ve got to admit it’s pretty funny.
What counts as an opt-in?
I had to laugh out-loud today when I read the final point of Seth Godin’s blog, which stated ‘Assume that unless they’ve notified you otherwise, all prospects are willing to get spam (press releases, phone calls, letters, ads) from you.’
I’ve tried it all when it comes to reaching out to potential customers (cold-calling, canvasing, mailers, emails, promotional products, etc.) and have had mixed results with each approach. Additionally, I’ve never been timid to reach out to someone for the first time. Fear of rejection is simply not in my make-up.
Seth’s post made me curious about what it means to opt-in. If someone give you their business card, does that give you the right to put them on your mailing list? (I think it does) What about cold-calls? When we put together a list from the Chamber of Commerce or even the Yellow Pages, are there any rules about who you should or shouldn’t contact? Is the old ‘throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks’ mentality valid? I’d like to hear your thoughts.
The New Liturature
As a history major at IU, I was required to read dozens of old texts and novels. This is a practice that I have continued throughout my adult life. One book that I had always intended to read was ‘On the Road‘ by Jack Kerouac. A few days ago I picked it up and started reading, and I’ve been simply mesmerized ever since.
I’ve got old-school illusions of America. I’ve always dreamt of going back to a simpler time before interstates chopped our nation into a thousand pieces and television dumbed us down til we were all boxed up and shelved. Most of all, it distresses me to think that people have all but stopped reading and writing. One constant in ‘On the Road’ is that all the characters dream of being famous writers. It’s just simply not all that prevelent in this day in age.
Our saving grace just might be social media, and blogging in particular. The more people who start blogging and do it consistently, the more socially enriched our society may become. The fact that so many great blogs seem to be popping up gives me hope about the future intelligence of our nation. In fact, I would define the word blogger as ‘one who dreams of being a famous writer’.
I encourage all bloggers out there to ‘hone’ their craft. There are so few out there who know how to harness the elequence of the writers of our past. Let’s make something lasting. Something that will still be talked about like the great works of liturature of the past. There is so much out there to discuss, and so much to learn and our culture might still be able to recover from the disparity of reality TV and senseless celebrities.
The virtual world might be the only frontier that many of us ever get to explore, and the beauty of it is that it’s a world that we are creating ourselves. We make it what we want it to be with our thoughts, opinions, and insights. There is much left to do and much left to create. I sincerely hope that each and every one of you will take these words to heart and help this cultural renaissance thrive.
Note: The image at the top of this post links to an amazon.com page where you can obtain a copy of ‘On the Road’ I strongly suggest that everyone who love liturature read this book if they haven’t already.
What's all this talk about the future?
Things move pretty fast here on the ol’ world wide web and if you don’t move pretty fast you’re liable to get passed up. Or are you? I’m relatively new to the blogosphere, social media sphere, and most every other ’sphere’ out there, so a lot of the time it’s all new to me. The one constant that I’ve found on my journey is that everyone seems to be trying to race to the end of the finish line. Am I wrong here? When did we abandon proven strategies? Aren’t there still time-tested proven methods that will allow your marketing to succeed, regardless of what crazy new widget becomes available?
I’m certianly not the first to express this concern. Recently Lorraine Ball posted an entry on her blog listing 9 guidelines for online marketing and how they are really the same guidelines that have always applied to forming a marketing strategy.
Susan Murphy recently posted a rant on her blog about how the entire social media community seems to be ’scrambling’ towards the next big thing, and how in the process they just end up producing a lot of redundant mediocre rigamarole.
There are basically two constants in business. 1) There will always be a very small percentage of people who brashly push forward into the unknown and succeed by accident (usually accompanied by huge profits). 2) There will always be a much higher percentage of people who follow a system that works and succeedslowly (though often with lower profit margins).
We are certainly at the dawn of a new era. Marketing (and business for that matter) has already changed enormously as a result of the web. However, we need to keep our heads and not get too carried away. It is a long journey after all and there’s no reason to peter out early.
Commercials of the Future
Recently my fiancée and I moved in together, and as a way to save a few bucks we decided to get internet, but no cable TV. As a result of this, I’ve spent a lot of time exploring different media outlets on the web. This led me to discover Hulu, which is a 100% free ad-supported platform for watching tv shows and movies online.
I’ve been really impressed with both the selection and the video quality, but what I’ve found really intriguing is the way that hulu advertises. Basically every five to ten minutes, they insert a VERY short commercial from their sponsors (they’re typically less than 30 seconds long). They’re so short and unobstructive that I actually find myself WATCHING them. In fact I would bet that they’re the first commercials I haven’t tuned out since the advent of DVR and TIVO.
So it seems that hulu has done a great job, but I do think they’ve missed the boat in one critical area. In order to watch videos on hulu you have to create an account and submit your email and a password. My problem is that this is the only information they gather. Why not give users a short survey to find out what they’re interested in and then show them ads based on that information.
For example, when I go to watch episodes of ‘The Office‘ they show lots of ads for ‘Obama for America‘. While I’m sure that lots of Office viewers are also Obama supporters, I’m equally confident that a lot of them are hard-core republicans who would never vote for Obama no matter how many ads you throw at them. A simple survey could make sure that those people see ads that might pursuade them towards another organization that they might actually be interested in. Consequentially, the ad time would be that much more valuable, and therefore Hulu would be able to charge more for their services.
I’d definitely like to give big thank-you to the folks at hulu for creating such a great site. I hope that someone out there will find this idea useful.
Indy Confluence Delivers Big
Last Tuesday brought the arrival of the third official Confluence networking event. Having attended the September event, I knew that I should expect a great speaker, some fantistic networking, and food and drink, but when I found out that Scott Abbott was the keynote speaker, I was especially excited. Scott is one of those rare visionary entrepreneurs who seems to make success appear out of thin air. He’s worked with some of the largest and most powerful companies in the world (IBM, Apple, GE, and Harley Davidson, just to name a few), and he’s recently released the book ‘Pocket Porchlights.’
The evening began with the always entertaining Ron Sukenick providing an exceptionally enthusiastic introduction for Mr. Abbott. I’ve been impressed by Ron’s commanding presence at each of the two Confluence events that I’ve attended. Ron is an excellent addition to any networking event due to his energy, personality, and networking skills.
Scott Abbott’s presentation was in interesting mix of business and life lessons syncopated with with video clips from popular movies and some of his own creation. His lessons of positive pragmatism are ones I’m not soon to forget. His presentation culminated with a request for input on his new book ‘Thrive Defined.’ Special thanks to Scott for an awesome presentation and for providing everyone in attendance with a copy of his book ‘Pocket Porchlights.’
The evening continued with hors d’œuvres, drinks and some great networking. Confluence is primarily designed for individuals wishing to network with medium to large sized businesses. There was an excellent mix of salespeople, business owners, and job seekers. I’d like to extend a special thanks to Erik Deckers for inviting me to write about my experience and to Brett Healey for organizing a fantastic new networking organization.
New Facebook is Better than Old Facebook
I’ve got to get this off my chest. I’ve kept quiet for far too long. I LIKE THE NEW FACEBOOK! There I said it. I feel so much better. Why? I’ll tell ya why.
Facebook had to change. It was getting rediculous. There was simply too much input from app developers that had infiltrated the old facebook. It had honestly gotten to the point where I didn’t want to use it any more. There was too much clutter on the page and it just looked disorganized. I know that there were certain ways to customize your page that people miss, but I’ve been on facebook for a long time and I remember how sweet it was when it first started… it had gotten really crappy.
In the beginning facebook was a content driven platform. It grew primarily as a picture-sharing platform for college students (I was one of those students at the time). From the inception of social media there were two constants 1) Myspace is for music 2) Facebook is for pictures. As soon as they made it possible to ‘tag’ your friends in your pictures and and notify everyone as soon as that happened, facebook set themselves up as the most efficient way to ’show’ your friends what you were up to. Unfortunately, facebook became infiltrated with WAY to much other stuff from independent developers and it got all mucked up.
I began using the new facebook the day that it became available, and I realized that the facebook folks were aware (as I was aware) that they were going downhill fast and needed to fix it if they were going to remain relevent. The new platform is simply a work of art. It takes the core features of facebook (pictures, video, events, groups, notes) and puts that on the front end. The other applications are still availabe, but they don’t clutter the community. I think this was a great move for facebook and it definitely kept me using the platform.
Fitness Blog is Right On
I love it when I find out that someone I’ve known for a while is a fellow blogger. This weekend I discovered that my friend Ryan down in Bloomington had started a fitness blog for his business Force Fitness. I was thrilled to discover that Ryan and his partner Wil had done an excellent job of creating a blog with a lot of value and a lot of heart. I thought that it would only be fitting that I do a short review of what I can only describe as a very impressive blog.
1. This blog creates a lot of value for Force Fitness’ clientele by providing a wealth of information on health and fitness. Ryan and Wil have done an excellent job of establishing themselves as experts in their field and channeling that expertise into their blog readership.
2. The Force Fitness blog also addresses the complex philosophy of the coach/athlete relationship. They are excellent at showing how much they care about their people. This definitely puts them ahead of the average trainers.
3. Ryan has started to dabble in video blogging, showing visitors various training techniques and tips. I would love to see more of this in the future.
4. I love that their are two authors. In the past I haven’t wholeheartedly embraced blogs with multiple authorships, but in this case I think it works well. I wouldn’t recommend having more than 2-3 authors on the same blog.
5. These guys are really good about writing frequently. As I’ve said before, this is the benchmark of a successful blog.
I also have a few pieces of constructive criticism that I hope might help their blog reach a wider audience.
1. I’d like to see them ‘join the blogging community’ by referencing other fitness blogs and linking to them within the posts. The more active you get with other blogs, the more exposure your blog will get, and in the end the more potential customers will see what you do. You can find blogs on virtually any topic on Google or Technorati
2. Ryan and Wil definitely need to get on Smaller Indiana. I realize that the majority of the people on Smaller Indiana are from the Indianapolis area, but there are still a ton of Bloomington residents that use this fantastic resource to spread their ideas.
3. Along with the video, I’d also like to see more pictures of their facility and anything else that they do that might be of interest to their readers.
I’ve added the Force Fitness blog to my list of blogs that I read regularly. I think these guys have done a great job of creating a community around what they do and I’m excited to see where they take it from here.
More or Better?
I wanted to take just a few sentences to talk about frequency in blogging. A lot of people say they can’t blog every day, because they don’t think that they’re capeable of contributing meaningful content every day. While I don’t recommend putting absolute crap on your blog, I do subscribe to the school of thought that more blog entries is better.
This is particularly important when you consider the audience of a blogger. Very often it is other bloggers, and more often than not, they view your blog along with several other blogs in some sort of blog reading platform (I use google reader). I’m on there almost every day reading the feeds that I’m subscribed to. I know many of the people whose blogs I read either personally or by reputation. I know that most of them are busy professionals who don’t have time to blog every day. However, I do know that I’m going to get consistent updates. Sometimes it’s just a little tid bit (Doug Karr will simply post a few of his favorite links that he thinks his readership will enjoy).
The most important part of building a blog readership is to let your readers know that you are serious about what you do, and that they are going to get a few new paragraphs each time they come to see you. Don’t fret about content. It’s your blog and I guarantee that it will get easier the more you do it. Remember, content comes first and it is definitely better to have more.
Social Media Savior
Every once in a while I’m reminded of just how amazing it is to be involved in social media. When the reality of unemployment hit me I new that my online connections would be imporant, but I think that I might have underestimated just how important it might be.
Yesterday my fiancee walked into our bedroom to find me parked next to the headboard with my laptop. ‘Are you blogging? You’re supposed to be job-hunting!’ Now I don’t blame her for scolding me. We’re getting married next summer and I really need a job before we ‘officially’ begin our lives together. What people who aren’t initiated into the social media world will never understand is the power of being connected online. What’s even more important is that I’m trying to get a job in social media. Should I really be blogging less?
Whenever I write a blog, I like to post in multiple places so that my words of wisdom will get as much exposure as possible (I learned this trick from Kyle Lacy). It was particularly important in this case that my message be heard (I need a livelyhood folks!). Luckily, because of my activity in various online communities, it was only a matter of hours before I had a much better idea of what was out there.
The beautiful thing about social media is that it’s a fantastic way for people to make all sorts of interesting connections. For me, my social media journey began 4 years ago when I first found out about facebook. I thought ‘Wow! That’s an amazing way to keep in touch with people.’ Then, I discovered all the unique ways that businesses can use social media to connect with customers. One thing that organizaitons sometimes forget is that social media is best at connecting individuals.
I’m looking for work, so social media can help me connect with the human resources manager of a company I’m interested in or even with the CEO. It helps me get over the initial hurdle of connecting with the people who will help me get where I need to be. One thing that big business is slow to understand is that this phenomenon can work in reverse as long as you realize that it’s all about INDIVIDUAL interactions. Company ABC can try to connect to individuals using social media, but it is very likely that it will fail. But, if Ed from the marketing department and Joe from sales each start blogging (authentically) about what they do, they can connect with other individuals who might be interested in Company ABC’s products and services.
Basically what I’m saying is that in order for social media to be effective for business you have to eliminate the B2B, B2C, the branding, and all the other crap that keeps the people in your organization who are truly interested in social media from connecting with a world of potential customers. I’m still on the job hunt, and I’ll always be crazy about social media. If anyone sees a classified ad reading ’social media mogul wanted – 100k/year’ please let me know.
Hi, I'm Colin Clark, President of TribeSwell. We specialize in helping small businesses utilize online technologies to drastically expand their business. From social media consulting to search engine marketing, we have the skills and knowledge to take your business to the next level. read more 
