Category: Web 2.0/Social Media

By Posted on Posted in Branding, Business-general, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Networking, Publishing, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , ,

Have you been dithering about starting a blog? Blogging provides several advantages in your marketing, but a lot of people are scared off by the idea.

It’s not that hard. A no-cost tool called WordPress makes it easy.

WordPress dashboard showing the ribbon, file naming, and text-editing window
WordPress dashboard showing the ribbon, file naming, and text-editing window

WordPress is a terrific platform. I have never heard of it not working on a site, though if your host company doesn’t support it, you’d need to do a manual installation (any web designer could help you with that). Most webhosts have one-click WordPress installation in their CPanels.

You do need to know some things about WP before you set up.

  • There is WordPress.com, which is hosted on THEIR servers, and WordPress.org, where your content is hosted on YOUR server (you don’t have to own your server–let your hosting company do that). You want .ORG, so you have full control over the content and cant be held hostage over it. Neither one charges money.
  • WordPress is a very simple shell that uses “themes” to determine the look and feel. There are thousands of themes out there, some at no cost and others for a fee. Find one you like that can incorporate your company branding, but play with it to see how easy it is to work. There are some that nest text inside Java routines as one example) and I have found it’s really tough to find the place I need to be to make minor edits.
  • Editing in WordPress is really easy, assuming you picked a theme that didn’t have the issue I just described. If you turn off the blocks feature, the interface is similar to Microsoft Word or GMail . So you don’t have to learn any HTML. Instead of using angle brackets to e.g. turn your text bold and then back to regular, you just highlight the text and click the B button in the formatting ribbon. You can see that ribbon at the top of the screenshot.
  • Find and install a few key plugins: a backup program so if WP utterly collapses, you still have your content; a file-namer that gives your posts a meaningful name taken from your headline (see where it says “Permalink” on the screenshot?), probably some others.
  • WordPress updates frequently, both to add function and to beef up security. Set yours up to automatically run the updater, but remember to check every now and then to see if you need to update your plugins. Updating is just a few clicks and very intuitive.
  • You have a choice every time you post new content: a post, which goes at the top of your blog (which posts in reverse chronological order so the newest is on top) or a page, which is part of your permanent website structure and can be organized with menus, etc. Posts can also be sorted by category, so your reader can see everything you’ve put in any particular category just by clicking on the category name. I find it very worth the extra few minutes to add categories, keyword tags (which help people find your post), a picture, and an excerpt.
  • Consider having a designer set up the site to begin with, making sure they know you want a theme that’s easy to edit posts, and then posting your own content from there.
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By Posted on Posted in censorship, Consumer Issues, Democracy, Ethics in Government, language, National Conference on Media Reform, Politics, propaganda, Social and Economic Justice, Technology, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , ,

Thank you, Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel for speaking truth to power. Since this is published on the FCC website, Clyburn’s is an official federal document, and thus automatically in the public domain. Please reprint widely. Rosenworcel’s may be as well, but I found it on CNET so am linking, not reprinting.

Note: I met Commissioner Clyburn several years ago when she addressed a National Conference on Media Reform. I was impressed with her as a speaker Now I am impressed with her as a writer, too.

DISSENTING STATEMENT OF COMMISSIONER MIGNON CLYBURN Re: Destroying Internet Freedom, WC Docket No. 17-108

Dissenting FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn in 2014 (courtesy Wikipedia)
Dissenting FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn in 2014 (courtesy Wikipedia)

“I dissent. I dissent from this fiercely spun, legally lightweight, consumer-harming, corporate-enabling Destroying Internet Freedom Order.

“I dissent, because I am among the millions who is outraged. Outraged, because the FCC pulls its own teeth, abdicating responsibility to protect the nation’s broadband consumers. Why are we witnessing such an unprecedented groundswell of public support, for keeping the 2015 net neutrality protections in place? Because the public can plainly see, that a soon-to-be-toothless FCC is handing the keys to the internet — the internet, one of the most remarkable, empowering, enabling inventions of our lifetime — over to a handful of multibillion dollar corporations. And if past is prologue, those very same broadband internet service providers, that the majority says you should trust to do right by you, will put profits and shareholder returns above what is best for you.

“Each of us raised our right hands when we were sworn in as FCC Commissioners, took an oath and promised to uphold our duties and responsibilities ‘to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination… a rapid, efficient, nationwide and worldwide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges.’ Today the FCC majority officially abandons that pledge and millions have taken note.

“I do not believe that there are any FCC or Congressional offices immune to the deluge of consumer outcry. We are even hearing about state and local offices fielding calls and what is always newsworthy is that at last count, five Republican Members of Congress went on the record in calling for a halt of today’s vote. Why such a bipartisan outcry? Because the large majority of Americans are in favor of keeping strong net neutrality rules in place. The sad thing about this commentary, it pains me to say, is what I can only describe as the new norm at the FCC: a majority that is ignoring the will of the people. A majority that will stand idly by while the people they serve lose.

“We have heard story after story of what net neutrality means to consumers and small businesses from places as diverse as Los Angeles’ Skid Row and Marietta, Ohio. I hold in my hand letters that plead with the FCC to keep our net neutrality rules in place but what is striking and in keeping with the new norm, despite the millions of comments, letters and calls received, this Order cites not even one. That speaks volumes about the direction the FCC is heading. That speaks volumes about just who is being heard.

“Sole proprietors, whose entire business model, depends on an open internet, are worried that the absence of clear and enforceable net neutrality protections will result in higher costs and fewer benefits because you see: they are not able to pay tolls for premium access. Even large online businesses have weighed in, expressing concern about being subject to added charges as they simply try to reach their own customers. Engineers have submitted comments including many of the internet’s pioneers, sharing with the FCC majority, the fundamentals of how the internet works because from where they sit, there is no way that an item like this would ever see the light of day, if the majority understood the platform some of them helped to create.

“I have heard from innovators, worried that we are standing up a mother-may-I regime, where the broadband provider becomes arbiter of acceptable online business models. And yes, I have heard from consumers, who are worried given that their broadband provider has already shown that they will charge inscrutable below-the-line fees, raise prices unexpectedly and put consumers on hold for hours at a time. Who will have their best interests at heart in a world without clear and enforceable rules overseen by an agency with clear enforcement authority? A toothless FCC?

“There has been a darker side to all of this over the past few weeks. Threats and intimidation. Personal attacks. Nazis cheering. Russian influence. Fake comments. Those are unacceptable. Some are illegal. They all are to be rejected. But what is also not acceptable is the FCC’s refusal to cooperate with state attorney general investigations, or allow evidence in the record that would undercut a preordained outcome.

“Many have asked, what happens next? How will all of this — net neutrality, my internet experience — look after today? My answer is simple. When the current protections are abandoned, and the rules that have been officially in place since 2015 are repealed, we will have a Cheshire cat version of net neutrality. We will be in a world where regulatory substance fades to black, and all that is left is a broadband provider’s toothy grin and those oh so comforting words: We have every incentive to do the right thing. What they will soon have is every incentive to do their own thing.

“Now the results of throwing out your net neutrality protections may not be felt right away. Most of us will get up tomorrow morning and over the next week wade through hundreds of headlines, turn away from those endless prognosticators and submerge ourselves in a sea of holiday bliss. But what we have wrought will one day be apparent and by then, when you really see what has changed, I fear, it may not only be too late to do anything about it, because there will be no agency empowered to address your concerns. This item insidiously ensures the FCC will never be able to fully grasp the harm it may have unleashed on the internet ecosystem. And that inability might lead decision-makers to conclude, that the next internet startup that failed to flourish and attempted to seek relief, simply had a bad business plan, when in fact what was missing was a level playing field online.

“Particularly damning is what today’s repeal will mean for marginalized groups, like communities of color, that rely on platforms like the internet to communicate, because traditional outlets do not consider their issues or concerns worthy of any coverage. It was through social media that the world first heard about Ferguson, Missouri, because legacy news outlets did not consider it important until the hashtag started trending. It has been through online video services that targeted entertainment has thrived, where stories are finally being told because those same programming were repeatedly rejected by mainstream distribution and media outlets. And it has been through secure messaging platforms, where activists have communicated and organized for justice without gatekeepers with differing opinions blocking them.

“Where will the next significant attack on internet freedom come from? Maybe from a broadband provider allowing its network to congest, making a high-traffic video provider ask what more can it pay to make the pain stop. That will never happen you say? Well it already has. The difference now, is the open question of what is stopping them? The difference after today’s vote, is that no one will be able to stop them.

“Maybe several providers will quietly roll out paid prioritization packages that enable deep-pocketed players to cut the queue. Maybe a vertically integrated broadband provider decides that it will favor its own apps and services. Or some high-value internet-of-things traffic will be subject to an additional fee. Maybe some of these actions will be cloaked under nondisclosure agreements and wrapped up in mandatory arbitration clauses so that it will be a breach of contract to disclose these publicly or take the provider to court over any wrongdoing. Some may say ‘Of Course this will never happen?” After today’s vote, what will be in place to stop them?

“What we do know, is that broadband providers did not even wait for the ink to dry on this Order before making their moves. One broadband provider, who had in the past promised to not engage in paid prioritization, has now quietly dropped that promise from its list of commitments on its website. What’s next? Blocking or throttling? That will never happen? After today’s vote, exactly who is the cop of the beat that can or will stop them?

“And just who will be impacted the most? Consumers and small businesses, that’s who. The internet continues to evolve and has become ever more critical for every participant in our 21st century ecosystem: Government services have migrated online, as have educational opportunities and job notices and applications, but at the same time, broadband providers have continued to consolidate, becoming bigger. They own their own content, they own media companies and they own or have an interest in other types of services.

“Why are millions so alarmed? Because they understand the risks this all poses and even those who may not know what Title II authority is, know that they will be at risk without it.

“I have been asking myself repeatedly, why the majority is so singularly focused on overturning these wildly popular rules? Is it simply because they felt that the 2015 net neutrality order, which threw out over 700 rules and dispensed with more than 25 provisions, was too heavy-handed? Is this a ploy to create a ‘need’ for legislation where there was none before? Or is it to establish uncertainty where little previously existed?

“Is it a tactic to undermine the net neutrality protections adopted in 2015 that are currently parked at the Supreme Court? You know, the same rules that were resoundingly upheld by the DC Circuit last year? No doubt, we will see a rush to the courthouse, asking the Supreme Court to vacate and remand the substantive rules we fought so hard for over the past few years, because today, the FCC uses legally suspect means to clear the decks of substantive protections for consumers and competition.

“It is abundantly clear why we see so much bad process with this item: because the fix was already in. There is no real mention of the thousands of net neutrality complaints filed by consumers. Why? The majority has refused to put them in the record while maintaining the rhetoric that there have been no real violations. Record evidence of the massive incentives and abilities of broadband providers to act in anti-competitive ways are missing from the docket? Why? Because they have refused to use the data and knowledge the agency does have, and has relied upon in the past to inform our merger reviews. As the majority has shown again and again, the views of individuals do not matter, including the views of those who care deeply about the substance, but are not Washington insiders.

“There is a basic fallacy underlying the majority’s actions and rhetoric today: the assumption of what is best for broadband providers is best for America. Breathless claims about unshackling broadband services from unnecessary regulation are only about ensuring that broadband providers have the keys to the internet. Assertions that this is merely a return to some imaginary status quo ante, cannot hide the fact, that this is the very first time that the FCC has disavowed substantive protections for consumers online.

“And when the current, 2015 net neutrality rules are laid to waste, we may be left with no single authority with the power to protect consumers. Now this Order loudly crows about handing over authority of broadband to the FTC, but what is absent from the Order and glossed over in that haphazardly issued afterthought of a Memorandum of Understanding or MOU, is that the FTC is an agency, with no technical expertise in telecommunications; the FTC is an agency that may not even have authority over broadband providers in the first instance; the FTC is an agency that if you can even reach that high bar of proving unfair or deceptive practices and that there is substantialconsumer injury, it will take years upon years to remedy. But don’t just take my word for it: even one of the FTC’s own Commissioners has articulated these very concerns. And if you’re wondering why the FCC is preempting state consumer protection laws in this item without notice, let me help you with a simple jingle that you can easily commit to memory: If it benefits industry, preemption is good; if it benefits consumers, preemption is bad.

“Reclassification of broadband will do more than wreak havoc on net neutrality. It will also undermine our universal service construct for years to come, something which the Order implicitly acknowledges. It will undermine the Lifeline program. It will weaken our ability to support robust broadband infrastructure deployment. And what we will soon find out, is what a broadband market unencumbered by robust consumer protections will look like. I suspect the result will not be pretty.

“I know there are many questions on the mind of Americans right now, including what the repeal of net neutrality will mean for them. To help answer outstanding questions I will host a town hall through Twitter next Tuesday at 2 p.m. ET. What saddens me is that the agency that is supposed to protect you is abandoning you, but what I am pleased to be able to say is the fight to save net neutrality does not end today. This agency does not have, the final word. Thank goodness.

“As I close my eulogy of our 2015 net neutrality rules, carefully crafted rules that struck an appropriate balance in providing consumer protections and enabling opportunities and investment, I take ironic comfort in the words of then Commissioner Pai from 2015, because I believe this will ring true about this Destroying Internet Freedom Order:

I am optimistic, that we will look back on today’s vote as an aberration, a temporary deviation from the bipartisan path, that has served us so well. I don’t know whether this plan will be vacated by a court, reversed by Congress, or overturned by a future Commission. But I do believe that its days are numbered.

“Amen to that, Mr. Chairman. Amen to that.”

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By Posted on Posted in Consumer Issues, Customer Service as Marketing, Democracy, Diversity, Ethics in Government, General Commentary, media-general, Politics, poverty, Shel's Personal Life, Technology, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , , , ,

So, great—Time Magazine wants public feedback on its 33 finalists for Person of the Year. I love to share my views, so of course I clicked over to participate. But I couldn’t find a way to see the list of nominees without scrolling through 33 yes-or-no votes, one at a time. Not knowing the full list, I don’t want to vote prematurely. Doesn’t look like there’s a way to go back and undo a choice.

Time Magazine's Person of the Year poll doesn't let you see the choices before voting
Time Magazine’s Person of the Year Poll Doesn’t Let You See the Choices Before Voting

I’d ask them but can’t even find a contact page except for subscriber support (and I’m not a subscriber). 

Besides, if you only want to (and are eligible to) vote for one, why would they make us go through 32 no votes? It would be very easy to have a grid of 33 captioned pictures, and you could click on the one you want to vote for. It also doesn’t say as you’re voting (or even when you’re done) whether a later yes vote invalidates the earlier one. If it doesn’t, that would justify the format, but they should explain this. If it does, it makes the situation even worse.

This is so lame, and I feel so disenfranchised! You’d think Time would have better user interface design. Ugh!

Oh, here’s the secret, which I discovered when I went back to grab a screen shot: There’s one little red line to click, directly beneath the huge graphic, if you want to see the results so far—and that shows the list.

Time's Person of the Year Poll—secret key to see the list
Time’s Person of the Year Poll—Secret Key to See the List

Still have to make the ridiculous 33 checkmarks and 76 unnecessary clicks, but at least you can cast an informed vote. Saudi Arabia’s power-grabbing prince is currently well in the lead. I cast my vote for the #metoo hashtag, even if the idea of a hashtag being a person is almost even stranger than the idea that corporations are people.

It’s good to see a good spectrum of cultural and political diversity in the finalists, from low-income people of color to rich white men with reactionary views. Other nominees I could have supported included San Juan (Puerto Rico) mayor Carmen Yulín, Colin Kaepernick, Pope Frances, and the Dreamer kids. Surprisingly, Standing Rock Water Protectors were not on the list.

Time Poll—First screen of the list
Time Poll—First screen of the list

For decades, I’ve felt that if I got to make the rules for life, one of them would be this: no product goes to market until its designers had lived with it for 6 to 12 months and tested it thoroughly. From a user point of view, this poll is a perfect example of why we need a rule like that.

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By Posted on Posted in Business-general, Customer Service as Marketing, General Commentary, Publishing, Transparency vs. Secrecy, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , ,

Hyperion Contact Us page

Dear Hyperion Books:

All I wanted to do was to send you a review copy request so I could review “Stirring It Up” by Stonyfield Farm founder Gary Hirshberg. I review books on socially and environmentally conscious business.

I went to your contact page expecting to find a press contact. But all that’s there is how to write to you if I want to contact one of your authors directly. There’s no way to contact ANY of your departments, except a few social media links.

Oh yes, and from my desktop computer, your Twitter page link goes to one spammy tweet from last November that I don’t think is yours. Oddly, on my laptop, it goes to a no-such-account page, as does your Facebook link.

I even went to your bookseller page, where I found a link to the Disney media center–which includes media pages for lots of Disney broadcast properties but not Hyperion.

Surely, with all the resources at Disney’s disposal, you could have a person in charge of media contact for Hyperion, and you could list at least one way to contact you that actually works. There’s not even a phone number!

In the 21st century, there’s absolutely no excuse for companies to barricade themselves behind windowless fortress walls. Empowered customers don’t just get mad; they tell their 10,000 closest friends on Facebook or Youtube (“United Breaks Guitars” is up over 14 million Youtube views). If I were a paying customer with a gripe, I’d probably be buying “hyperionsucks.com” right about now.

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By Posted on Posted in Business-general, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Publishing, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , ,

This year, at Book Expo America, I interviewed Enrique Parrilla, co-founder of pentian.com, with offices in Sevilla (Seville), Madrid, and Los Angeles. Pentian marries publishing services with crowdfunding—something I don’t think the publishing world has seen before, and something that to me at least seems more attractive than the typical subsidy publishing model of most publishing services companies (which is not, typically, a good deal for the author). How it works out remains to be seen—and meanwhile, here’s what Parilla had to say about it:

The main difference between Kickstarter etc. and us is that the backers provide the funds. [Kickstarter donors[ may get a signed copy, a named character, but that’s it. We wanted to create a connection between the author and the community. A financial connection. The backers receive a percentage of sales.

Benefits to author:
Every backer becomes invested in success of the book. You get a much more viral connection with the market, you have 20, 40, 50 backers.
You make every backer a publisher, and they obtain profit from the success of the book.

You present the book proposal to us. We own the entire production chain, layout, design, marketing, production, distribution. We’re able to assess the costs of publication, and publish at a substantially lower cost. We are not getting a fee on the production. Once the sales start, we work with the net profit. But the cost of production will change from one continent to another, so it is difficult to come up with percentages on the retail price. So we take all the net profits and put them in a big bag. 50% goes to the backers, proportional to their investment. 40% goes to the author. 10% goes to the publisher.

The model is disruptive in several ways:
The percentage to the publisher is much lower because so much goes to the backers and the authors. This is sufficient, because the cost of production is covered by the fundraising campaign, and we print on demand.

Initially, when we receive a manuscript or proposal, there is an evaluation. If the thing stinks, we will offer to fundraise for professional editing services. We will come up with a budget, custom made for each proposal. If they need an illustrator, we’ll budget for that.

We will accept anything not indecent or violent. We have done fundraising books for charities, novels, children’s books. 70% fiction, 20% nonfiction, and the rest is a hodgepodge.

Unlike Kickstarter, we put a cap on the funds to be raised. We are really striving to be fair and to provide a sense of urgency. If you see a book is doing well, if you do not jump in, you may be left out. We can do additional campaigns for marketing, etc., but once we set the budget, when it’s gone, it’s gone. So you see the funding accelerating rapidly when a book hits 60-70% of its funding goal. The viral concept works really well. People start swarming out, and we don’t always understand why—but when it happens, it happens very quickly. Some books sit at 5% and don’t get funded. The investors get the full amount returned. If the author raises half, we’ll look at options like digital-only format. We’ll look at options to make it work.

Backers do not have the certainty that a book will get funded. As a publishing company, we make sure the publishing happens and the book sees the light of day.

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By Posted on Posted in Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , ,

I’m running into more and more people whose Twitter profile shows only, “This person has protected their tweets.”

After almost five years on Twitter, I still don’t understand why people would want to do this, and why Twitter actively encourages new users to protect their Tweets. It’s not any kind of security feature. All it does is make your tweets invisible unless someone’s following you. And why would anyone follow you if they can’t see what you’re posting and decide if you’re worth their time?

When you “protect”—a more accurate word would be “isolate—your tweets, they cannot get passed around. And people who are checking you out will not tend to follow. A far better way to inoculate yourself against Twitter spam is to follow people who post intelligent and interesting tweets. Yeah, you’ll get the occasional nasty tweet with a virus link, when some idiot hacks into one of your friends. But you’d get those even if your tweets are protected, as it does nothing to stop inbound tweets. And they’re easy enough to spot and ignore/delete. (Hint: if anyone’s saying they saw a funny picture of you, they can’t believe you’d do this, etc. and a link—or just a link with no text—don’t click, and drop them a note that they’ve been hacked.)

If you’re so impressive and famous that new followers want to follow you without knowing what you’re saying, well, OK—but you’re still shooting yourself in the foot. More followers—more REAL followers, not autobots—give you more influence, and even more status.

People with protected tweets tend to have very small numbers of followers of which a fair percentage are autobots. And this means they exclude themselves from a lot of co-marketing and self-marketing possibilities; no company is going to want to partner with someone whose tweets are invisible, no one will visit your blog on the basis of a tweet they can’t read.

Fortunately, it’s easy to turn the “protection” off again. If you’re not on Twitter so people can read your stuff, notice you, and build relationships, why ARE you on Twitter?

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By Posted on Posted in Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , ,

These are my rough notes from Podcamp Western Mass 5, held March 30, 2013 at Holyoke Community College. It uses abbreviations: SM = social media; the others are pretty obvious. If I spelled your name wrong, I apologize.

According to organizer Morriss Partee, @mmpartee, since the Boston folks did a big regional thing several hundred miles south, this is now the longest continuously running Podcamp in New England.

I took notes on every session I attended except my own session, “Making Green Sexy.” I would be happy to send the slides from my talk; simply e-mail shel at greenandprofitable.com or Tweet @ShelHorowitz with the message “Podcamp PPT” (if tweeting, be sure to include your e-mail).

BUILDING OFFLINE RELATIONSHIPS FROM ONLINE CONNECTIONS

Thomas J. Fox, former addict, financial literacy/econ devel, lots of speaking:

I started in SM as the Pajama Poet on MySpace! Became the top poet there.

Social media eliminates the gatekeeper. I get an invitation to sit in on a financial literacy conference at the White House, b/c Twitter. Ask questions of important people, start conversations, build on conversations get known by them—get immersive. But it can’t be about you you you—be genuine. You build the relationship organically.

And then you take the relationship OFFline. I had a coffee with a guy I met on Twitter and I connected him to 10 people in the community. When you meet, you already know what you have in common. It goes right to how to help each other. You’re catching up with an old friend.
Listen 100% to what someone is saying.

Not interacting on SM is like having a drawer full of business cards.

Work/exercise your networking muscle, and remember you’re a brand.

Vine: new platform, 6-second videos!

Foursquare can build your brand. If you login from PV Planning Commission, Develop Springfield, etc., networking events, it shows you’re serious. And every time I’m speaking, publish an article, I post on SM. People see I’m serious and I’m genuine. At networking events, I focus on the coordinators, and they know everyone else.

And if I’m traveling to speak, I make time to meet SM contacts in Denver or wherever. And it can be huge for business.

Promote others.

For three years, I’ve been trying to meet Harold Grinspoon. I met a janitor who works for him, and he introduced me. Just because you don’t think someone can help you… I’ll have coffee with anyone. You never know.

Audience: people who built their personal networks BEFORE they needed them were much more effective. This predates the web, but online makes it faster and easier.

I’m doIng everything I do right now b/c one person invested time in me. Otherwise, I’d be dead in a ditch somewhere. I work w/ Junior Achievement to create economic opp for young kids. It takes a village to sustain an economy. Get involved in SOMETHING: friends of the homeless, whatever.

SOCIAL MEDIA FOR ACTIVISM (open panel)

Cool apps:

ittt: If then then that: tweets take actions depending on your tweet

software to give nonprofits access to your tweet stream (David Pakman knows what it’s called, shared it last year)

Triberr, spread messages throughout tribe

BufferApp.com (allows prescheduling and bit.ly shortening and some analytics): time a ppt preso as tweets, coordinate with tweetchat and hashtag

Aldon Hynes: sharing my coloring books in kindergarten, 1965, was social media. The oldest post I can still find online is from 1982. Wrote some of Howard Dean’s Deanspace, in Drupal.

Trends: Geocaching, gamification

Leslie Rule: I train how to do three-minute videos, data wrapped around a narrative, very teachable.

Aldon. I have a FB interest group and a Twitter list to monitor state reps in CT.

Tip O’Neil was right that all politics is local, but also, all politics is personal. I can reach my Senators directly, they will read my message because of the work I’ve done in social media.

Me: you have to merge online and offline. Congress all seem to tweet. But when the developer saw Save the Mountain at the farmers market, it got to them.

Leslie. You in MA are too polite. In CA, if you don’t like your rep’s actions, you go picket their house. And with coalitions, build allies, it’s not just yourself. It’s other people with 10,000 members. You won’t get allies saying schools need a hard reboot, but you CAN find allies to oppose Common Core.

Consensus: all of these causes and constituencies overlap; we have to get out of our silos and collaborate.

PERSONAL BRANDING

Lesley Lambert, Realtor. I remember when there was a book, and you’d fall in love with a house and it would have been sold two weeks ago. Now I spend no money on offline advertising. I’ve niched myself as the high-tech realtor with old-fashioned service.

80% of buyers start online, I suspect it’s even higher. I use social media/Internet to market my clients as well as myself. I have a hand in most SM but especially Twitter. I’m also very community-based and spend a lot of time talking about where we live.

Alfonso Santanello, Creative Strategy Agency (and Strictly BusiNews, business TV show)

I’ve been getting more personal, sharing about me and not just about my business. People wan to do biz with people they like. So I show people who I am. Who I am in person is exactly who I am online, and that’s very important when you brand yourself.

Kelly Gellanis, Red-Headed Diva, social media education for educators. “Professional socializer.” I help them reflect an online persona that reflects who they are offline.

Myke Connolly, stinkycakes.com, “the diaper cake boss” Twitter: diapercakeboss and mrstinkycakes People are paying attention. You have to watch what you say, keep in mind others’ feelings (and personal safety). I’ll post about a trip AFTER we come back. I posted something that someone else interpreted as degrading. That was not my intent. The goal of SM is to get people to fall in love with you. Then they support your projects.

Lesley: My name is the one brand that will be with me forever, sop if you put my name in any social network, you find me. If I’d named myself MissParkSqaure and Park Square was no longer, all that branding is wasted. But there are advantages of company name, etc.

Alfonso: Even if I don’t intend to participate, I grab my name on every social platform. I don’t want someone else impersonating me. Whatever you do, stick to it across all platforms.

Kelly. I use redheadeddivak on all sites, b/c redheadeddiva was taken on Twitter when I started (adult toys).

Myke: I listened to what my audience called me.

But if your name is taken, and a lot of celebs can’t get their own name, you can be creative. Or fi celeb enough, you can get it back. Go ahead and call yourself Stinky Cakes; you will be writing me a check.

All: you also want to get a business page if your biz has a different name. SEO benefits (Lesley).

Alfonso: with FB’s new Graph Search, biz shows up before personal, and they’re ranked by activity and engagement.

Kelly: But even on a biz page, sprinkle some personal stuff in.

HappyGrasshopper.com: email marketing service that does the writing for you (realtors. Others?), and guarantees replies. It’s a 3-sentence e-mail that has nothing to do with real estate, just little viral-video text messages. I approve the messages, and they get more response than anything else. It reminds me that consumers aren’t always looking for dry toast; they want fruit or at least some butter.

Myke: And those messages, we can forward them around, and oh yeah, Lesley does real estate. It’s more memorable than something dry about real estate that you get 50 different people sending you.

Being known before needed: Myke: I love Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends And Influence People.

Kelly: I treat my name like Target does. What I do as RHD may shift, but I will always have that as my name.

Alfonso: I got business because I did the TV show, and I didn’t talk about marketing, I talk about business and the local WMass scene, and without ever talking about the agency, it brings business. I used that platform to get known before people knew what I did.

Lesley: Blogging has been huge, and that’s why I write a lot about non-real estate. I blend community and R.E. and my life. I do a lot of video blogging. I’m an open book. If it happened to me, I probably blogged about it, and that includes the ups and the downs. And hopefully you’ll feel a little empathy coming through, and they’ll know me when they’re ready.

Myke: One of my mentors says “there’s a butt for every seat.” Your audience will follow you. I spent a year getting the same qs over and over when I was training kids at Westover Job Corps. So I did a book, and I go back to the same people and say hey, I put it all in a book. And the big brands are losing because you can’t know the people behind the brands.

Lesley: the best response I ever got was asking “do you care if your realtor wears a suit?” (and the answers were overwhelmingly no).

Myke: Different fish need different bait. Not all posts will work for everyone. Most will not. So figure one answer represents 250 people. Listen to your audience, see what they engage about and start to add to that convo. Then they will engage when you don’t expect.

Alfonso: 99% of your videos won’t be viral, and most that do are mistakes or embarrassing moments. You have to have patience.

Myke: you move viral much faster if an influential person picks it up. You can buy a lot of followers, but they’re not engaged.

PSYCHOLOGY OF SM: Jennifer Williams, @verilliance

Every platform has a psychological profile. It’s all about interaction.

FB: Who am I

Tw: who am I/what’s in the world RIGHT NOW

Pinterest: who do I want to be

Instagram: How an I express myself and my world?

G+: What do I think?

LI: How am I important? What do I have to offer? What’s on my resume?

Audience (Jeff): LI will show up first on Google, and most are high-income. I did a search for a certain HR credential, and it brought up thousands of people. Those are people I can network easily with.

Psych profile influenced by timing of entry, intent, parameters, demographics

FB entered when MySpace was “kind of a hot mess.” MySp was unfriendly to age 25+. I didn’t like the anonymity, and usability was atrocious. FB had no intention of uprooting MySp but it was a very clean, simple interface. You had to use your real name, lot of white space, and people were ready by the time that hit. They realized they wanted to connect wit the people they know. It ix the closest representation to who we are. They only want to associate with you if you attract on a deep personal level. It’s deeply intimate. 67% of all Internet users, but skewed toward under 30s.

Twitter: after FB, tried to capture snippets. Who am I with, what am I doing/reading/watching right now. Half-life of a tweet is 8-15 minutes, vs. 80 minutes in FB  post. Archive is difficult to search, everything is pushed down very quickly. As a business, don’t say what you’re doing, but give others something to relate to right now: news, opinion, quotes.

Pinterest: aspirational. ~66% women—do women want to gather more? They are still the primary homemakers. It’s very concrete, what color things are, what your furniture or food looks like. Some college education, more rural. Is there not enough opportunity in real world so they’re doing it online? Yes, images, but they have to be aspirational. Quotes do really well in an image. “I want to be that good.”

Instagram: self-actualization. Everybody loves pictures. Smartphones were becoming ubiquitous, but the pictures looked terrible. Instagram provided simple filters to make them look nice. Lower income, urban, younger (under 30). If using in business, use in conjunction with other tools, or be REALLY visually interesting. It integrates very well with FB.

G+ looked a lot like FB, people looked at it  as FB competition, but Google was looking at something different. The people who flocked in were tech people, early adapters, thought leaders. Huge population of scientists I don’t see anywhere else. Also great space for artists. You get much bigger images, text area, and videos, and real-time commenting. A doodler was able to build a whole product line from his hobby. There’s still a dialog happening about the images, what inspired them to create it, how technically did you get that photo? Audience (Karo Kilfeather, @aspiringkaro): you get the best of Twitter—discovery—and FB—big canvas.

Jennifer: The ability to select who sees which messages. Like Twitter, you don’t have to follow them back. You can put them in the “I don’t know these people” circle or just ignore.

I don’t focus on upping the numbers on any of the channels I’m on, and I have wide variance in numbers. Much more important is how you’re sharing.

Personally, I don’t want to be connected all the time. I disconnect. But when I connect, I want to know right where to go and jump in, post the right things in the right platforms.

SM should be your outpost; your base should be your own website.

Blog posts on Twitter: you have to pique their interest.

Val Nelson: But I want the complete thought. I don’t want to go clicking over to the blog.

Jennifer: that’s what I like about G+, you have room to see a whole blog post.

Audience: I miss the full conversations on Twitter. Now, everything’s a link.

Paul Bogush: Twitter has shifted from stationary computing to phones, and it changes what people tweet about. Fewer in-depth convos. And people want to be seen as smart, so they tweet links to good content.

Jennifer: but young people, Latinos, blacks are using Tw for convos. White upper class have more access to other tools.

verilliance.com/hispi: co-op for high-end group marketing/conversion consulting.

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By Posted on Posted in Web 2.0/Social Media

I posted the following on a LinkedIn discussion list called “Step Into the Spotlight, ” regarding the appropriateness of the new LinkedIn endorsement tool, and whether to endorse back. The consensus, which I agree with, is not to endorse people you don’t know. I thought you’d enjoy the discussion, so I’m sharing my post with you. The above link goes to the entire discussion.

I invite you to comment below about your own policies about whom you choose to connect with on social media.

The whole crazy thing about the new LinkedIn endorsement tool makes no sense to me. I don’t even click on them anymore because I know I’m going to be greeted with a screen asking me to endorse back, for something where I have no clue if they’re qualified. If it’s someone I know well, I will click over, and endorse if I feel I can. And I agree, it completely devalues the endorsement.

I feel badly that the tool does not have an easy way to send a message back (like “thank you”). It is too many steps and I don’t have the time. I’d love to see a button to click that would thank people for their endorsement and let it go at that. But sometimes I have 10 or more coming in, and I have a business to run.

And yes, I have been asked a few times to do a real endorsement and said no because I don’t know their work–and because I have made my reputation on the basis of business ethics and green principles as success principles and won’t violate that. The answer is always greeted with respect, and often with an apology.

However…on whom to connect with…my policy, as a somewhat public figure, is to say yes to all connection requests on both LI and FB unless I have a reason not to. It’s easy enough to sever the connection if the person is inappropriate, but I’ve only had to do that about five times in six years–and I refused one connection request from one person I know personally and who is nothing but trouble.

I find there are a small handful of people who have friended me and then actually built a relationship, and I think that’s great. Actually, Tsufit [the founder of this particular discussion group] is in that category; I didn’t know or even know of her before she invited me here. We had a very nice phone visit last week, in fact.

Now with Twitter, I’m fussier. I do feel guilty that I don’t have time to visit every one of my 6000+ followers’ profiles and decide whether to follow back. I won’t use the automated tools, though; I want to be in control of my Twitter stream. It keeps a lot of spam out and enables Twitter to still be useful. So what I do is once every week or two I look at the new-follower notices and open up anyone I actually know, and anyone whose screen handle catches my attention, and follow back those I like. A lot of them have unfollowed by then but Twitter is not a numbers game for me. The others–if they retweet or engage me, I’ll check them out.

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By Posted on Posted in Advertising, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , , ,

Several big, big brands were able to think and act like nimble small businesses and seize the moment when the Superbowl went dark yesterday:

Oreo, with a picture of an Oreo on a dark background and a teaser that said:

Power out? No problem. pic.twitter.com/dnQ7pOgC

Lowe’s and Walgreen’s both went directly to their own product lines:

Hey dome operators at the ‘Big Game’, there are a few Lowe’s nearby if you need some generators.

We do carry candles. 

We can’t get your , but we can get your stains out.   pic.twitter.com/JpQBRvjf

Several nonprofits and PBS also jumped in. Here’s one I particularly like, for its higher-message consciousness raising—and for the smart way it draws traffic to its own website:

half a billion people in Africa NEVER have power. Learn more at https://www.one.org/us/2012/11/13/what-makes-you-angry/ …

Social media marketing maven David Meerman Scott commented on the instant chatter using the hashtag #blackoutbowl. Scott liked the Oreo ad a lot, but noted that Lowe’s lost an opportunity for vastly higher readership by not using a hashtag. Umm, neither did Oreo, actually, yet that got retweeted thousands of times. I wonder if it got so much play because Oreo had actually run a Superbowl commercial earlier in the game? This is something worth investigating: whether traditional advertising can build social media participation, and thus engage the prospect at a much deeper and longer lasting level. It would be fascinating to know how many new followers Oreo got between the time of its original ad and the time it tweeted about the blackout—especially considering the exorbitant price of Superbowl advertising.

What I find most interesting about the whole thing is that the people who run these big corporate Twitter accounts had the freedom to respond instantly. Nobody convened a meeting (good luck with THAT on a Sunday and during the Superbowl). Boom, the Tweets went out. I don’t normally associate that sort of amazingly nimble behavior with the likes of Audi, Procter & Gamble, and Nabisco, especially since there have been many instances of companies taking big flak for Tweets that did not help their brand (Johnson & Johnson’s Motrin baby-wearers fiasco comes to mind).

I’ve been advocating pegging pitches and messages to current events for about 35 years—but social media gives us an instancy that we didn’t have in the 1970s, or even the 1990s. We can expect to see this sort of “newsjacking” (Meerman-Scott’s term) more and more often.

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By Posted on Posted in Energy & Sustainability, Entrepreneurship, Green Business, Green Marketing, Innovation, language, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, People Helping People, Socially Responsible Investing, Technology, Web 2.0/Social Media Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Heard of Carrotmobs yet? Consumers have used our buying power to avoid companies with the wrong values for decades. Now there’s a positive flip: actively making the effort to buy from companies that support your values. I only heard the term “Carrotmob”—so called because consumers use the carrot of positive business rather than the stick of withdrawing business to achieve social good.

I think I only heard the term a month or two ago; since then, I’ve run across it several times. This concept seems to be entering the language faster than anything I can remember since “Ms.” was invented as a gender-neutral alternative to Miss and Mrs., back in the1970s.

Here’s a particularly cool one with the odd twist that it was initiated by the company—and since I write about out-of-the-box people-centered marketing of green products and services, worth flagging here. I imagine this marketing strategy could get old fast if too many people do it, but the idea of having your customers pre-fund your sustainability venture is a good one. Think abou Kickstarter campaigns; this isn’t so different, after all.

A coffee company has decided that organic/fair trade coffee is not enough; the coffee should be transported on cargo ships powered by renewable energy. Specifically, using wind power.

Thanksgiving Coffee, a California-based artisan roaster, will arrange for wind-powered shipping if people buy $150,000 worth of coffee on Carrotmob. The goal is to prove demand for wind-transported coffee and research ways to make wind-powered shipping a reality in our own time.

It’s worth remembering that all cargo shipping from the dawn of history into the 19th century was either wind-powered or human-powered (by rowers). So there’s no need to prove that cargo shipping can be wind-powered. However, a transatlantic voyage by wind took many weeks, sometimes went way off course, was more susceptible to storms, etc. Steam and then diesel made shipping fast and reliable enough to create the modern global economy. So the real challenge is not to prove that they can use wind-powered ships, but that they can compete effectively using a modern wind-powered shipping fleet.

This of course could have a huge impact on the entire cargo shipping industry, if it can be done effectively and inexpensively enough to transport many different types of items. And certainly, it will inspire the shipping industry to add more sustainable practices even if using conventional diesel-powered cargo ships.

Meanwhile, if you’re a coffee drinker, you can help Thanksgiving Coffee test the waters for sustainable shipping. Go read the article on Ecopreneurist, or skip directly to the Thanksgiving Coffee Carrotmob page and buy a pound or two.

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