Archive for the review category
A Counterpoint to the Branding Craze
I just finished
Branding Only Works on Cattle by Jonathan Salem Baskin on my flight to St. Louis. I’ll be honest that I thought I wasn’t going to like the book. I write about personal branding quite a bit, and the first sixty or so pages of the book seemed to be just a repetitive slam of the product/service type of branding. Boy, am I glad that I read more and finished the book. By the end, I really loved the ideas, and I came away really reconsidering some of how I talk about marketing and have shifted a little bit of what I say when advising people about social media strategy for business. Let me talk a bit more about what changed my mind.
Changing Behavior Drives MUCH More Value
Baskin left me thinking hard about two major points. The first was that money spent on marketing should be money spent on shifting a buyer’s behavior closer towards buying. Yes, I realize that this is fairly basic and fundamental in one light, but if you look at how far from this perspective marketing efforts seem to be drifting, especially online, it seems to me that maybe we should poke people on the shoulder and point out the basics again.
Is it more important that I remember the Geico Caveman, who somehow accidentally became a TV celebrity? Or should I be motivated somehow to double-check my insurance rates against Geiko’s? Repeat this with every brand. Did Starbucks win so many dollars because we remember the green and white logo, or because they invented the “third place?”
Search Is Vital
“Search is a larger, behavioral reality that impacts corporate strategy.”
Baskin rightly points out that marketing strategies that don’t include a heavy element of search won’t work well for us. One of the reasons that I advocate content marketing, such as writing a compelling group blog, is that it’s an opportunity to build search equity. Writing about things that people might search for is a great way to find some new people at your door who might want a look at your product.
Worth It
In the end, I think that Branding Only Works on Cattle is worth a purchase (or if you’re a library type, add yourself to the waiting list). The supporting information and some of the other points that I didn’t write out are worth looking into as well. It’s not a reference that I’ll be pulling down from the shelf every few days, and this book itself probably won’t be Baskin’s landmark work, but I tell you this: I’ll be waiting to see what he publishes next in a few years.
What’s your take on my representation of what he said? What do you think about focusing on behavior over branding? Are you naturally adding search into your marketing mix? Have you considered content marketing?
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Zoho Launches Marketplace
Zoho, the hard working people who have created about a million free web-based applications, a company that every small business looking to cut software costs in 2009 should be looking to for solutions, has opened up a brand new marketplace to accompany the launch of their even-more-functional new Creator 3.0 release. What’s this mean? If you want an application and Zoho hasn’t made it yet, make it yourself.
They released a fun little video to go along with the news:
I’ve long been a fan of what Zoho does, but with this new Marketplace, I get the feeling that we’re going to inch closer to one of my predictions for the future of social networks: velvet rope social platforms.
By this, I mean to say that Facebook won’t cut it in the near future for professional networks. If you and I are journalists, we’ll want to hang out on a site that has tools that make sense to us, alongside our friending features. If we’re realtors or hoteliers, we’ll want tools specific to our trades. If we’re educators, the same.
Tools like these in the marketplace are a great way for us to move even closer towards that future, as I see them potentially extending into use on various social platforms, if you just squint your eyes a bit.
Check out all the cool apps at Zoho Marketplace, and congrats to the team on yet another launch.
Mobatalk Relaunches as Video for Twitter
Michael Bailey is deep into alpha testing of MobaTalk, which he’s calling “video for Twitter.” It lets you record up to two minutes of video and post it to Twitter, to iTunes, as an embed on a site, and I’m sure that I forgot a few other places that it goes.
I’ve seen some of Michael’s testing via his blog. It’s looking very promising. His side-by-side comparison was interesting, too. I’m not sure how one begs to get into the testing with it early, but folks interested in video should pay attention. Michael did a great job a few years back with the MyChingo audio commenting system, which used to be the rage on all the podcast blogs. I think he’s got a great tool here that can be used commercially or for conversation, or as part of your existing video presentation.
What do you think? Swing by MobaTalk to see the video in action.
Play it Forward with Akoha
Fresh off the stage from TechCrunch50, Austin Hill from Akoha has released us all from our frieNDA requirements. You’ll recall that I hinted about this a few weeks back. Well now, I guess I can talk.
Imagine a real world game (played in the open world, not your computer) where the prime goal is to do good things for others. Now, imagine that the game doesn’t stop when you perform your good deed, because in handing over the card that started the mission to the person you’ve helped, you encourage them to “play it forward” to do something good for someone else. That’s the game in a nutshell, at this stage.
Essentially: do good things for other people, share, play it forward, and earn great karma points for doing it. Make sense?
There’s an online component to the game that will show you where the cards have gone. When I told Seth Godin about it last Monday, he said, “like the dollar bill game, Where’s George?” Yes, that seems like a reasonable comparison the way I understand it.
Akoha has lots of ideas for how the game will work over time, and how it might be expanded. It’s all very participatory. There are lots of ways that you will have an opportunity to impact and change and shape the course of this game.
But for now, look how simple it is. Go do something helpful. Be a good person. Share something. Play it forward. Easy, right?
Check out Akoha.com, but also, if you see me at a conference in the coming weeks, like the New Marketing Summit, ask me about the game. I might just have your deck of Akoha cards with me, waiting to hand them out and get you into the game.
Photo credit, Austin Hill, used without permission.
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White Trash Moms of the World Unite
Michelle Lamar has a winner with The White Trash Mom Handbook. I’ve been reading bits of it, laughing until I can’t see, and then reading some more for a few weeks now. There are so many useful ideas in here, should you be willing to follow the way of the White Trash Mom. For example: are you running out of time off you can take for your kids’ perpetual doctor visits? Try the “fake purse” escape.
Essentially, keep a fake, empty purse in your desk at work. When you have to leave, just put that purse somewhere visible, mess up the papers on your desk, leave the lamp on, and make it appear like you’ve just taken off to the ladies’ room for a moment, instead of the truth: that you’ve actually left for the day.
Are you unsure whether you want to be called (or deserve to be called a white trash mom? There’s a quiz on page 14. Answer yes or no to a few of these:
- My children call soda pop “kid beers.”
- My children learned to order pizza delivery by age seven.
- My children have gotten angry with me for borrowing cash from them.
Chapter 6 on the “Muffia” is the best in my opinion. It deals with the “mean and snobby mothers who usually run the school your child attends.” Totally fun.
Okay, it might not be the book for everybody, but I tell you this: it’s fun, written for laughs, and definitely a great gift for that friend you like to tease.
What’s this have to do with social media? Michelle’s active on blogs, Facebook, and you can follow
The book is The White Trash Mom Handbook, and you can get it at bookstores everywhere.
Can we Bitch Our Way to Change
Social bitching. Can it be? Twitter friend Aronado sent me to his project, Bitchy Betty. It is, near as I can see, a social site built around the idea of seeking change through griping and complaining. From the site:
bitchy betties see a need, we put it out there and find a solution. betties want to make changes (big or small!) in our world and we are kicking *ss and taking names to get it done.
The site itself had a lot of the features you might expect from a social site: a way to make a profile, a way to link to bitches and betties that you like, and tags and things like that. It looked nice, aesthetics wise, and everything worked as promised.
So what’s your take? Is this a good way to begin a conversation about change? Are you ready to be a betty?
Internship Ratings- Interns Rate Back
Boston notable and young entrepreneur Stephanie Gurtman wrote me to let me know that she’s launched Internship Ratings, a place where interns can rate their experience as interns at various area businesses. According to the website, this is an east coast launch, but the concept is easy to spread across the country, so I imagine as interns discover it, the ratings might spread. One person who might want to check this out is Lauren Berger, the Intern Queen. Maybe Stephanie and Lauren will find some synergies.
I’m back and forth on rating sites. I think that they offer some value, but I always wonder about traffic. I’ve been looking back and forth at Vendor City in the same way for the last several days (a few months?), too.
To the plus side, it’s great that people have a place to rate and have a voice. My big concern: traffic. How do you get people there, and sustain the interest?
For now, I wish Stephanie luck, and as of this posting, here’s the Top 5 Places to Intern, according to her site:
What’s your take?
Magnolia Opens Up
Social bookmark site Ma.gnolia announced today at Gnomedex 8 that they’re going open source. OpenID, OAuth, and all kinds of stuff rolling out in September. Community superstar Tara Hunt made part of the presentation, and got me thinking about what she’s planning to get done there. I think they’ve got some great ideas.
My only question: what moves us off the bookmarking tools we’re using? What gets me out of delicious? What gets you out of … um… are there other social bookmarking sites that we *really* use for reference?
And there again is the thing.
To the plus, all these great features and openness. To the minus, lethargy.
How do you move people to your amazing new thing?
My answer is humans. Human bridges, human threads.
What’s your answer?
How Jive Software Sees Enterprises and Community Software
I had a chance to talk with Sam Lawrence, CMO of Jive Software about what’s coming out in his 2.5 release of Clearspace, Jive’s enterprise community software platform. (Note, we use the 2.0.x version of Clearspace to power Project Dogfood). There are a bunch of features that will no doubt get covered everywhere but very capable people. What I wanted to talk about was some of what came out in the conversation with Sam.
How Social Software Merges with the Enterprise
First, it has to integrate with the tools they understand. Sam showed me how Clearspace integrates with Salesforce.com, for instance. This was interesting. Because now, if I’m a sales guy and I’m getting ready to call one of my prospects or clients, I’ll get anything said anywhere within the Clearspace product about that company or prospect as information before I make the call.
If you’re a social software provider, or someone looking to advise companies on social software, think about this kind of usage: merging what Mzinga’s Rachel Happe calls “unstructured data” in with a typical contact record.
Easy and Easier Still
Sam mentioned that Clearspace has an email in and out feature, that allows mobile users and others to get information in and out of the platform simply, and through nothing more than an email interface (for instance). It should be easy to use a community platform, and it shouldn’t always require a full web browser. Most enterprise customers aren’t using iPhones.
Customization and Less Heavy IT Department Lifting
Lots of the changes in 2.5 might seem a bit aesthetic at first, but think about it: If you are building a social software platform and it is to be supported internally, you’ll want something that allows people to change and fiddle with most of it without a lot of effort required from IT. Why? Because they have other, bigger fish to fry. I like this as a trend, and I hope other platform providers continue to make things easily customizable, and yet not especially difficult to manage.
Further Integration
We have to stop thinking of social software as an island. It’s going to be part of the fabric, and that requires integration points, connectivity to the way people create business processes, and flexible enough to fit within an organization’s existing business styles. I saw lots of that in Jive’s latest release, and Sam talked about the company’s further efforts in that department for future visions.
Takeaways
I believe social software has a good opportunity to find its way into the enterprise in a much bigger way. There are other great companies doing this kind of thing as well. I’m excited by what I see from my friends at Mzinga, Telligent, and other platforms working in the enterprise software space.
For the rest of you looking to take your products to an even larger audience, especially if you’re hoping to become part of the way business is done, I think the future comes only once we give people adequate bridges forward from the present.
Here’s a video Jive made of their product, if you want more details:
Clearspace 2.5 from Jive Software on Vimeo.
On Twitter and Listening
Several months ago, Christopher S. Penn told me that I should use SpinVox to convert my voicemail into text. I thought it was a good idea, but I was using another product entirely for another different reason. But the other day, I tweeted something on Twitter about deleting hundreds un-listened-to (what’s the right way to say that?) voice mails. It was just me blabbing into the wind that I had too many voicemails and had decided to throw them away.
Except that James Whatley was listening. It turns out that the @whatleydude is also the “social media chap” for SpinVox, and while other people offered me a kind and understanding, “Dude, that’s a lot of voice mail,” James heard opportunity. (There’s word that Pat Phelan had something to do with this, too, but that’s unsubstantiated).
James set me up with a trial SpinVox account, sent me the information (customized for me) on how to configure my account for my specific carrier, and got me on my way. I set the service up in a few minutes, and then had my wife make a few test calls. It’s pretty cool.
As a review, this is like, months and months (years?) late. The product has been out for a while. But whatever. If you want to try something interesting, SpinVox is a speech-to-text voicemail translator, and it worked pretty darned good for me. I plan to keep using it for a while and see how it changes the way I do business. (Thanks for that, James!)
If You Are a Business
Are your customers online? Well, I say yes to most folks. If so, are you listening to blogs, to Twitter, to other sources of information? HOW are you listening?
I use a lot of free tools to scan the web and pay attention. I use Technorati, Google Blogsearch, and Twitter Search to name a few.
There are other tools. One is Radian6. I worked with them on a series of Twebinars (twitter meets webinar), and the last of these comes up Tuesday the 19th at 2PM (tomorrow as I’m writing this). The details are here. I’m doubly thrilled because CEO Marcel Lebrun is going to join me live in the studio to talk with folks about the importance of listening.
If you’re a business, do what James Whatley did with SpinVox did and listen. Do what Marcel Lebrun calls “listening at the point of need.” And build your business around your customers’ needs and not the other way around.
What do you think? Have you seen examples of this?
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