Return on Intention

Apple released the new itunes this week, and the key feature to watch is “genius”. In the new itunes, select a track and press the genius button (the little atom icon) and you will get a playlist from your music collection that go great with the track you picked. When you have a music library as a large as my business partner Daniel Lyons does, this feature works out really well. Of course, there is another side to the story that is good for people looking for new music, and for Apple.

The genius feature can also give you a list of the songs that will go great with your selection that you don’t own yet, but with an apple id, you can buy them in one click. From what we tested today, there are a lot of songs that Dan needs . . . and each one is only 99 cents away. I think I hear a “cha-ching” off in the distance… to the west… from southern california… 

There is a concept in software development (at least web development) called agile that seems to be part of a larger trend. First lets talk about agile, then the trend.

In traditional web development, you sit down with a client and try and plan out a huge project. This can take months, going back and forth over what it really needs to do, how it needs to do it and so on. What you end up with a giant planning document and estimate that spells out what is going to happen. Many clients like it because it gives them a solid number they can attach to the project and budget for. It is all very rigid and if something changes a barrage of paperwork follows to ensure that the original document and budget is adjusted to reflect the changes. This is all about control and a clear map. Then there is agile.

Agile works like this, you set up a really rough plan of what you want, then the developers go and start building. Then you get back together and decide what is good or bad and go back to work. Rinse and repeat. The theory is that you can get a project developed faster because your not trying to guess how everything will work and plan it all out. You’re making it up as you go (at least the developmental details). Essentially you take all the planning time and exchange for actual development and testing of concepts. This is all about flexibility. All in all this seems to work, and get projects done in about the same budget range but usually faster, or better.

This seems to be part of a larger common theme. We used to all have to go to an office and punch a clock, but now there are a lot of telecommuters and “I don’t care when you work, just so long as it gets done on time”. A closer example for me is this years BarCamp Albuquerque. BarCamp is a volunteer run conference driven by and for a specific community. Traditional conferences are set up in advance and planned to death. They have to be. You have to get a venue, speakers, food and on and on. When the date for the conference is set the year prior, thats it. If you have something else going on, the conference is not going to change dates to accommodate you. BarCamp did.

BarCamp’s date was set two months prior to the event. It was also set on a holiday weekend. (That was my fault. I didn’t notice). After the conference was “full” in a few weeks, the “registered” attendees started to unregister in waves. Apparently they noticed it was a holiday weekend and had other plans. BarCamp moved back two weekends to accommodate, and the attendees came back. A traditional conference would not and could not do that.

It seems that being flexible is the way in which we all want to work now. We are all busy and have to juggle many different things. I hear work life balance is one of them, but I wouldn’t know about that, owning a small business :). Take a minute to consider the ways you do business. Are there steps in your process that are inflexible? What would happen if you changed it? How much planning do you do? How often does it go according to plan?

I’m not suggesting that you drop everything your doing and fly by the seat of your pants. I am suggesting you take a good look at how you operate and ask a few tough questions. Like in web development, most often big up front design specifications are only done to create an airtight contract. What good is an airtight contract? It allows you to nail someone who screws you over. Think about that…. is that the right way to engage in business? Yes we need to reduce risk, and yes we need contracts, but at what level and cost? Perhaps the right approach is one based more on collaboration. A process that is based more on getting things right and taking a few risks, not trying to guess how everything will go to the letter and have enough ass-coverage to go to court. No plan ever survives contact with real people, so why do we try so hard?

So what?

I can’t tell you how to live your life or run your business, but consider:

What (illusions of) control can you give up to make your life / business better or faster?

When hiring a web developer (or other profession) have you done enough research / due diligence to make a decision based on them and their capabilities? (rephrase) - Are you hiring them for what could be (making real value for the organization and market) , or what shouldn’t be (with a plan for when they screw up)?

Just some thoughts - there is a comment section, What’s your take?

Google launched "Chrome" - their new web browser today. This is pretty exciting for web developers, as the speed of chrome is way faster than any other browser. Here is the speed report according to cnet.

There is a really cool story behind chrome that google has here . Its in comic book form which I think is great because they break down some of the technology into graphics that are easier for non-web junckies to understand. Its even better that the whole initiative is open source. Any other browser can use some of the real innovations that google has come up with. Why? As google put it, "We live on the internet". Their economic engine is tied to people using the web. The better their web experience the more they will use the web. Better browsers = better internet.  It makes great sense for them, more than trying to create another source of revenue from yet another web browser.

There isn’t a mac version yet, so I had to borrow my sons Vista laptop to see it in action. (I know, I can’t beleive he bought a windows machine either.) So far, its really awsome. If you run Vista, go download it here .

Mitch Joel has called in the cavalry to help answer the question "Are there best practices in social media "? If you don’t know who Mitch Joel is, he is the president of Twist Image (a Canadian marketing company), a Speaker, an author and the host for Six Pixels of Separation podcast . Yea, Mitch does it all.

My advice for social media marketers is to ensure that you are Adding Value . Social media is different to marketing in traditional channels mainly because it is conversation and community based. Traditional media is geared to interrupt, inform and basically talk AT the consumer. In the social media world, you are talking WITH your market, and they talk back.

When engaged in social media, the marketer is not in control. Even if the marketer wants to be, or tries to be, he/she is not. Like any other community, social media is made of up people who share a common interest. These are people who care so much about a topic that they will spend their free time online talking about it, sharing it, tagging it, creating it and living it. This is a passionate and committed group. They are not there to listen to sales pitches or be talked down too. A common mistake marketers make is to identify a community and immediately jump in trying to push their key messages expecting the community to line up and place orders. THEY ARE NOT SITTING AROUND WAITING FOR YOU. The key here is to try and become a member of the community, not a king that tries to rule over it.

The point of this article is to talk about marketing using social media, not just social media in general. The purpose of marketing is get a person or group to take a specific action or behavior. Most often this is selling a product or service. There is nothing wrong with that. Real world communities have merchants. Having a goal of selling to a community is not a bad thing. How it is done is the difference between success and failure.

The right  approach is to add value. We have all heard the adage "Don’t ask your doctor for legal advice. Ask a lawyer". No one is an expert in everything, and most often the professionals in a field are leaned upon for innovation, knowledge and insight. Professionals, brands and companies are expected to be leaders in their particular field. This works remarkably well considering that most social media marketing has the goal of becoming a thought leader, and therefor the go to guy (company /  brand) when its time for the community members to buy. The goals of the brand and the goals of the community can both be met.

Look at what Mitch is doing with this project, its a great example of adding value and making a win for both his personal brand( and by extension his company Twist Image) and the community in which he thrives. Mitch makes his living by speaking, presenting and having brands hire Twist Image to help them market themselves. In order for the market to want hire Twist Image or Mitch is bcause he is a thought leader. He is a respected professional in his community. To prove his thought leadership, people rely on him to know how to engage the market place successfully, and in this case, social media marketing.

Mitch could have written a blog post that says "I really really know this social media stuff". He could have sent out a message to his facebook group saying "I am awesome and you should all hire me". But he didn’t, because it wouldn’t work. We would all ignore him. Mitch did something much better. He added value.

Right now, some of the most respected members of the social media space (and me) are blogging about the best practices of social media. They are all getting the opportunity to show their thought leadership along with Mitch. This shows that Mitch believes he is on equal footing with his community. This also benefits Mitch because each of these blog posts are sending links to Twist Image’s blog. When the market goes to look for help in social media marketing, they have a really good chance at running into Mitch’s blog. All of these links will also help get Twist Image more google juice (higher search engine rankings). The participants also benefit in two ways. Their posts are now linked through tags , so their post has a better chance of being seen by the market place demonstrating their thought leadership and we all benefit from Mitch pulling together this information into one place we can all share. Everyone wins. The community got value, Mitch looks smart but humble. If you are considering marketing in the social media space start by asking "How can I (my company / brand) add value to this community", not "How am I going to get all these people to buy". A good way to find out is to listen .

I have been working on a lot of presentation as of late. BarCamp Albuquerque is coming up in a few weeks, and thats not lightening the load. I guess I shouldn’t complain, no one else signed me up to present. I’m actually looking forward to it, but as I sit here working on another presentation I think of all the presentations I’ve seen lately. There seems to be four kinds of presenters. One is bad. Thats it, just plain bad. No reason to spend any time here. Another kind is at the opposite end of the spectrum, there are good. Nah… increadible. Steve Jobs, Al Gore and Mitch Joel awsome. No real reason to spend to much time here either. Let get to the meaty middle.

There are two things that make a good presenter. Good Material and Good Presentation. In the middle you find people who have one or the other, but not both. Most recently I experienced the variety of presenters that had the Good Material part covered. The Presentation part, not so good. I really made me think as I stirring my coffee waiting for the hour to be over. This person I am listening to really knows what they are talking about. You can tell they have tons of great experience and a deep well of knowledge about their subject matter. But they were dead boring. 

I saw many presentations that day, some good and some bad. Here is the conclusion I came to. What you know isn’t what makes a good presentation. Sure you have to know what you are talking about, but that doesn’t win the day. Engage your audience. Tell a story with your presentation. Introduce conflict. Be excited. This comes easier to some than to others but I have a way to help with the transition to better presenting for those of us who slept in the day the presentation skills were handed out.

Take your presentation. Now go through all 50 of your slides and reduce them all down to have no more than seven words on each slide. Try for three, but settle with seven. Now take the clip art out of your presentations and replace the slide with nothing but a full screen image. Now try presentation again.

We just accomplished (hopefully) two things.

1. We made your slides better
2. We made your presentation better

Most people fill there slides with tons of bullet points. I think at one point I saw a presentation that had 25 points on one slide. STOP IT. This is not a reading document. Think billboards. When you fill a slide with bulletpoints you can’t engage with the audience… they are too busy reading. You probably are too. Additionally, people can read faster than you can talk, so if you read from your slides, everyone is done before you and waiting for your to catch up. If you whole story is on the slides, just print them out and give a copy to everyone attending and then you don’t have to present at all. 

With your slides whittled down to only a few words per slide, you now have to tell a story, not read a story. That is a lot more engaging to an audience. You will also no longer be battling with your audience for attention. They will look at your slide, see everything they need to in a few seconds and come back to you. This will increase their recall because they were actually listening instead of reading. 

No fancy presentation tricks or gimmicks today folks.  Just a few simple steps that everyone can follow. So go do it. I’ll try to do the same.

A mash up is when you take two things and make them work together to create something new. A good example of this is gruvr.com. Gruvr uses google maps to show users where local live music will be and pinpoint it on the map. Gruvr didn’t write the map software, they just use googles. 

Mashups allow developers to create more value out of existing tools. The only problem is you have to be a developer to know how to do it. Mozilla doesn’t think thats a good idea. Mozilla thinks everyone should be able to do it. To make this happen, they have introduced Ubiquity.  Ubiquity allows you web browser to do the work for you, and then gives you what you wanted by asking it in plain english (other languages to follow presumably), not computer code.

This could have really great future ramifications, so go check it out. There is a video a little way down the page that has some examples.

Here are a few articles I want to pass along. Happy reading.

Would you buy the cow?

The Psychology of Numbers in PPC Ads