Posted by Jesse Poe on May 24 at 10:10 AM
This post discusses:
• the hospitality, music, and internet industry
• a start-up to be aware of
• a cool iPhone app
• two ways to direct your strategy
• the key to successful poetry
Last night, I went to the ACE Hotel in midtown to meet up with Edward Aten founder of Swift.fm in ACE's very popular bar. Swift.fm is an amazing start-up that allows users to add audio information to tweets creating a radio-station style playlist of music (check out my office ambiance channel here) which is viral-enabled to allow users to engage content in various formats and contexts by highlighting their musical perspective. They are also a breath away from being the #1 Music-specific twitter client by traffic, and with their new platform of locked down branded-wrapped embeddable channels they are soon to be a swift force in creating brand identity, engagement and social conversation on the web (well even more than they already are). We talked about the future of Swift.fm and the future of the web and which direction we see it going: a direction that other like minds across town are quickly developing at diaspora* I had two eyes open all night as that not only am I interested in the internet (as it is my field) and especially as it relates to social networking and music (as that is my love), but also because I build social media plans for hip hotels and program their facebook pages in FBML. We toured the hotel and it’s famed analog sound system, met with the event planners and tried a variety of their special brews. Independently, Ed and I both took pictures of the Hotel/bar and showed them to each other, both photos were snapped with our iPhones, yet with surprisingly different results. My photo on the left, doesn’t look cool, but points out one of the cool features of ACE and it’s brilliant design; the curation of space through text and messaging throughout the space Such as this great use of the exit sign:
Ed’s photo on the right is much more cool looking and stylized in presentation as that he took it with the new app Hipstamatic which creates some really incredible shots (I have been using it exclusively ever since for all my photos), however his photo doesn’t show how cool ACE is, instead it shows how ACE is just like any other bar, hip or not, across the world, and in essence the backbone to the bar, that it is in the end a “bar”. There is what you present and there is how you present it. Success is a synergy between the two. The great poet Terry Hummer once told me the secret to poetry was to take a flower and expand it’s beauty and properties to become as vast as the cosmos, or to take the cosmos out of the sky and wrap into a language and understanding so tight that you can hand to someone like a flower.
Topics: Internet, media, social_networking, strategy, tools0 CommentsRead Full Post
Posted by Jesse Poe on March 19 at 10:38 AMToday we are very excited to have Gitamba Saila-Ngita a freelance strategist from San Francisco and founder of the outstanding site: The Retrospective as a guest Blogger for DMDxd.
Gitamba was a part of the Unconference we hosted last month in partnership with Wenovski and Parsons, and will be joining us again next week for our 2nd unconference March 23rd at Parsons.
Last month, while floating amongst the flashing cameras, models, and elite fashion parties that make up New York City during fashion week, I was invited by Jesse Poe, Associate Producer for DMDxd, to participate in a design-centered thought strategy unConference, hosted by Wenovski. I must admit, though, that I rarely enjoy going to conferences because either a) I'm reluctantly there for work or b) the conferences are nothing more than a podium for people to wax poetic on their own importance.
Thankfully, the Wenovski unConference (billed as such due to its largely participant-driven nature that shunned typical conference requirements such as fees and sponsored presentations) fit into neither category. Populated by some of New York's sharpest minds in anthropology, urban planning, architecture and technology, our group discussed how design-centric ways of thinking can solve every-day problems, and maybe even change the world.
In my view, good design permeates almost everything around us. Designers, regardless of their discipline, strive to solve problems of all shapes and sizes; maybe they're re-evaulating the placement of a door handle, or envisioning what colors will best echo a brand's core values. What started out as a loose conversation among 20 guests holed up in a Parsons' New School classroom turned more serious when we were given the task of brainstorming how we might solve societal and environmental issues affecting New York. Some of the topics we discussed revolved around the utilization of free and unused space, how to galvanize community identity through group initiatives and (my personal favorite) how to to dispel the fear of interaction in gritty New York City.
As a group, we voted on initiatives to battle the ironic resistance to human interaction in a city as populated as New York. Would it be shirts color-coded to specific moods? Or digital umbrellas that would display your interests, giving your fellow man an opportunity to relate? If you've ever been lucky enough to brainstorm with design or advertising creatives, you know the pitfalls (and promise) of having so many people simultaneously generating ideas. Luckily, Humantific's Garry VanPatter set clear parameters that let us tap into our knowledge, stories and experiences in ways that informed our ideas. And even more luckily, Petri Tanninen was kind enough to jot down all the thoughts and ideas of that brainstorm session at the Wenovski Design Thinking Ning page.
For me, the greatest take away from the unConference was the utter ease in which such various disciplines came together, and how new and innovative ideas followed. One amazing perk of the unConference was being able to ideate solutions with other people free of the bottle neck of client approval. What if a meeting to create a new building, park or playground was organized using this interdisciplinary approach? What if rigid governmental bureaucracy was replaced with groups working in balance, rhythm and harmony, all design school staples of thought? I love being challenged and engaged by thinking from outside my realm of experience because it allows me to start seeing a bigger, more holistic picture. Being in a room with someone like Jeremy Barbour of Tacklebox, who works as an architect when not indulging his many other talents, allowed me to tap into his experiences with design and architecture in China. His knowledge was influential in thinking of the ways in which a city like New York could make its populous not just friendlier to each other, but also to isolated tourists and travelers.
There are several more unConferences in the works so take a look and participate if there's one coming your way. And special thanks to Jesse Poe and Rowland Hobbs of DMDxd for the invitation, and to Arne van Oosterom of Design Thinkers for coordiating the event. When design is truly great we don't think of it as design, but as the ways we interact with the world around us. Imagine if we got that feeling from every aspect of our day-to-day lives, and how powerful and liberating that would be.
More coming on the next unConference!
----- As a strategist, Gitamba Saila-Ngita has helped brands develop strategy and content for the ever changing landscape of digital media. Clients have included Odopod & Evolution Bureau (EVB) on such brands as Pepsi, PayPal, and Gatorade. He cut his teeth in the marketing and branding world at Stage Two Consulting (S2C), a firm that specializes in branding, social media, and product marketing. There he worked on accounts including Boxee, Netgear, and Sonos. In his spare time Gitamba founded The Retrospective, an online publication focused on uncovering trends and giving insight into global consumer culture.
Posted by Jesse Poe on February 12 at 7:02 AM
Today’s UnConference was a smash hit. Hosted by DMD and Arne van Oosterom (Owner and Strategic Design Director at DesignThinkers, a strategic design agency based in Amsterdam, founder of WENOVSKI design thinkers network) at Parsons The New School for Design.
A collection of 20 great cross-disciplinary thinkers from San Francisco to Finland and in between, met for 4 hours to discus solutions for urban design.
The unconference started as a mummer, quickly raised to a rumble of fantastic ideas and thousands of possible directions for making world of design better.
After an hour of this exciting fray of thinking, GK VanPatter (Co-Founder, HUMANTIFIC, CoFounder, at NextDesign Leadership Institute Founding Editor at NextD Journal), stepped in with his own brand of design, making sense of cross-disciplinary innovation.
And make sense of it we did!
Broken into 3 timed sessions we:
discovered the issues we all had burning within us and were addressing in our own ways
distilled them all down to the most potent and effectual problem to solve, the problem which when solved would begin to unravel the tensions around other problems and open them up for solving
finally coming up with 50 possible solutions to that one issue
Amazing day. Amazing minds. Amazing results that got at the heart of not just possible directions for making world of design better, but possibly making the design of our world better through better interactions.
Posted by Jesse Poe on January 28 at 10:38 AM (Part 2 of Tomorrow Will Change the World)
Well it’s the morning after the day the world would change and well, has anything changed?
Jobs wrangled his illusive tablet unicorn out of Apple’s enchanted woods and it’s called the iPad. The internet exploded not with acclaim, but with jokes. One thing I learned as a musician was never name your band something that can easily be punned upon. Why? because for lack insight or time to investigate, it’s easier for writers to bash something than to support it. If there’s a joke to made then it’s the first step on that slippery path, and the iPad slid right down it.
Was it a game changer? Not really, but we can’t say until it is implemented. My greatest hope was to see 3G packages for existing iPhone users who purchased the Pad, and bundled subscriptions to newspapers and magazines. But there is still hope, even in it’s highly sterilized control freak OS.
It’s also the morning after one of the best speeches since Roosevelt, and if you watched the ignoble arm folding of the right during or Fox news afterward (just for torture), it wasn’t a game changer either, according to them.
However, this morning I was encouraged as I stopped at my local newsstand, and saw the positive headlines topping almost every paper, and it made me think. It’s not so much the product, but the way we react to it. It is not so much what is given to us, but what we choose to do with it.
So my challenge is this, even though Terry McGraw probably woke up with a horse head in his bed, we can still have bundled content, we can have cool innovation. Who will join us?
I’d like to see my favorite print in full glorious color, hyperlinked, and with video all in one spot. We don’t have to wait for Time or SI to lead the way, what about the The Baffler, or Yeti? And new hardware to interface. Adobe, Wacom? How about a slip case that holds the iPad on one side and on the other side a pen tablet to write/draw on, bundled with subscription services for university text books?
Posted by Jesse Poe on January 20 at 12:30 PM
So the New York Times is going to start charging for their on-line content.
Makes sense, people have always paid for the New York Times at the newstand or to open their door in the morning and find it waiting there, so why not on-line.
I clicked a survey yesterday on this very topic and the results showed that some 70% thought it should be free. Because journalist should work for free? Absolutely not, but because we have come to believe that everything on the internet should be free. How we got to that idea collectively is the subject of other posts, but it is true, free is the current currency of on-line life.
So is the Times doing something smart?
Well smarter than the Wall Street Journal, in that incidental visitors, arriving no more than once in a while through searches and links, would be unaffected by the new system. This is good as that Wired.com has proven it is the long-tail that is of greatest importance of all. Over 70% of the searches performed leading to their site are for articles more than 2 years old.
Blocking information is like cutting off people’s water, it just seems wrong, but if we can’t afford to pay for serious journalism, we would suffer much greater problems in the future. As an example look at the age of miss-information that Fox “News” has created.
What is very smart in all of this is that the New York Times is thinking ahead. The deluge of e-Readers that are about swamp the market will most likely funnel down into a paid prescription sort of package, as that internet providers will not be able to squeeze a third monthly charge for access. Your home connection, your phone and your tablet. It just won’t fly. But wrap that up together in a package with different content packages and I’ll buy it.
The most important thing is that as technology steps into this new decade you will see an advance in e-readers that will make the hype for the Apple tablet seem without basis. Flexible screens, that you can fold and shove into your bag will be the tipping point for a complete exodus to digital news, as it will no longer make sense, neither environmentally nor economically, to produce a majority of printed news. Having begun to step into the waters of paid subscription again, the New York Times will, even if running a skeleton crew, still be alive for this new time of jubilee that will once again reposit newspapers as pillars of wealth as well as culture.
Whatever the Apple Tablet may turn out to be, based on the speculation of what it is purported to be, they are missing the boat. I don’t need an expensive one-sided laptop. But an affordable flexible reader that has my choice of content, that I can follow hyperlinks for further exploration or word/fact look ups, email articles to my friends, see videos attached to the news, fold up and shove in my bag; that will be a game changer, and worthy of subscription fees. I’m glad to see NY Times getting ready for that kind of game.
I’m also glad that subscribers to the physical paper will get free access to the site, that is fair and makes sense, I love reading the Times in my hands, but for passing articles and information on to friends and clients, the on-line site is essential. And will hold me over till the future arrives. Topics: Internet, Mobile_Marketing, social_networking, strategy, tools0 CommentsRead Full Post
Posted by Jesse Poe on January 19 at 9:30 AM
This morning I was very pleased to see the success of the Mobile Campaign of the American Redcross. It's simple, texting "HAITI" to 90999 makes a $10 donation. $22 million according the to New York Times.
The gravity of the need, the compassion of people, and the simplicity of HOW you can help, made one of their most successful campaigns of all time.
Do mobile campaigns work? Yes. Compliments to the American Redcross for not only helping people, but for making it so easy for others to help them help people.
Here at DMDxd we try to lead by example. We see things that are about to go wrong and promote the good before it goes bad. But sometimes it just goes bad. What can you do?
Not only has social media, or perhaps better said dynamic media (as all media should be soical), become a force to be reckoned with it has also become a issue of corporate stance. If you now say to a mega-national, I am going to post how much you suck on my Facebook, they have corporate speak to combate and control that, which in essence makes people feel like once again they have no power.
The lesson to be put in our pipes and smoked is not the, hey if they make the effort and waste their time we might have to due some damage control (see United Breaks Guitars and it's more than 7 million views, first showed to me after a Thanksgiving dinner with my whole family watching, if only your company had that kind of viewer attention), but hey in the end we really don't know who our clients are.
That's a problem, not knowing who your clients are.
Enter M.I.A. who's 2007 underground-cum-mainstream hit "Pull Up the People", still to this day one of the best party songs of all time, became overwhelmingly famous with the success of Slum Dog Millionaire and their use of her undeniable sound in "Paper Planes".
So her new record, the first since all this amazing world wide success: Myspace views 29, 190, 328 and 133,398 Facebook fans, is to feature a hit about how she spent 3 hours on the phone with Verizon and still didn't get her problem resolved.
This song features actual Verizon workers singing with her about how the service, how shall I say, sucks!
Listen to Pull up the People, or Paper Planes from Slum Dog Millionaire and tell me if she has a voice that millions will hear or not?
I hate to point out the negative, but sometimes you have to, so that others don't do the same. This record has already gone to press, there is NO damage control. It has gone beyound social media, kids will be dancing to how bad Verizon treated her. Must I repeat, you have kids dancing to your poor serivce, there is no damage control. It would have just been better to have had more phone staff available to fix problems for a company who serivces so many people, of all levels.
Now if she'd only write a song about all my dropped calls on AT&T, I might get my service improved before I break contract.
Posted by Jesse Poe on December 11 at 12:37 PM
So you have built a site, written a blog and even got people to read it. Now what about the comments?
People use the comment sections to dialogue with other commenters and of course you the writter/brand. If you are lucky enough to get some one to engage with you why would you cut them short?
Imagine you finally get a business call and you limit it to 99 words. Come on.
Here is a lesson from GOOD.is who I usually adore, on how not to run your site.
They had a great post, I chimed in with a researched response adding to the post and encouraging conversation. My comment was 535 words of support and added value. GOOD truncates at 99 words, my other 436 words lost.
So I wrote a letter to them explaining how truncated comments don't exactly encourage conversation.
A week later still no response. Strike 2.
Here are the two take aways:
1. GOOD.is lost a passionate follower and turned a Zealot to a detractor over an HTLM code that could say 10,000 instead of 99, and by not caring enough to respond to their email. Why even have a "contact us" if you don't respond? Not a good situation.
2. Cut me off in the comments and I will just post a sidewiki which will immediately get picked up by Google. Lucky for good, the passion behind my 535 words, including the 436 they cut off was positive. Imagine had I been upset about what they wrote..... their word count limit would have made me even angrier.
What would be the draw back, well, that you might get a spambot that hacks in and leaves 30000 links on a comment, who cares, take it out, much better to be troubled once in a while by something everyone must face, than to limit interaction when interaction is what you are after and turn a brand zealot to a detractor.
GOOD work guys you lost a fan.
picture of the sidewiki:
Letter to GOOD.is which they never responded to:
Dear GOOD-
I preach your gospel, book mark you and always link to you in my own blogs, I think your doing a great job & have turned on many friends to your site.
Today I have to say that I am more than displeased with your site.
You posted a great article and I wrote a passionate response of 535 words.
You cut me off at 50 or so.... not a "good" practice, be glad that you have people who follow your site who care enough to write that much.
Adjust your word count to allow for as long as people want, that would be not only good but right.
It's hard to find people who are passionate to help and support, it's easy to loose people over stupid things like this, I just spent an hour of my time helping your site and now what?
Bad practice, GOOD.
I hope you fix this, before people just take the conversation elsewhere.
Posted by Jesse Poe on December 10 at 10:46 AM
So you have heard the buzz about Google now including real time search results.
Some are probably asking:
What does that mean?
And then others are asking:
What does real time search results mean to my small business?
Well quickly real time search results means that key words such as "name of your Biz" are going to be showing up on the front page of Google in a real time search window. These will be brought in from Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca for now, who knows what will be invented tomorrow.
So what does that mean for your business? That the time you are spending engaging with your clients/public is now going to be in the spot light. You have been saying good, encouraging, helpful, informative things on your twitter, right? Of course you have! So now when someone types in a keyword such as "bike repair", Mike's Bikerepair twitter account will be streaming in to the front page of Google. I will see all the helpful and courteous dialogue going on at Mike's and want to take my bike to Mike.
John's Bikerepair uses his 2.0 life to discuss how good his cereal is, so we'll know to call him for advice about cereal and Mike to fix our bike.
Remember three things about real time search results:
1. You will be seen, if you are participating in the 2.0 world.
2. Your competitors will be as well.
3. Your happy or unhappy public will also be seen there.
If you do not have a strategy in place to benefit from this, and also to damage control (when that time comes) then I suggest you get cracking! Or hire someone to do it for you.
Google has changed the rules of the game again and you can use them to your favor.
Posted by Rowland Hobbs on December 8 at 1:13 PM
All my life, I have never struggled for perfection. For one, I believe it's unattainable. For two, I believe it's a moving target. Nothing is ever perfect. If you ever think something is perfect, you're either lazy or misinformed.
On the web this is even moreso the case. The glory of the web is that we can change things on the fly. Files can be put up, and taken down. Images can be uploaded, downloaded, and deleted. We can create multiple versions of the same page just to test which setup works the best.
Today, WebMonkey (which sounds a lot less serious than it actually is) posted a blog much to this point, except regarding applications.
And it's true! We need to break free of the unending and deadly cycle of reviews and approvals. It is better to get something up and then work on it continually. Once it's in the real world, you can quickly see what works, and what fails.
If all we do is stare at PDF files of designs that have not been put to the real test of hard code programming, we set ourselves up for disaster when the browsers and connection speeds of the world show us what our actual project will look like.
Of course, this is a bitter pill to swallow. How do you tell a client "let's get it out there, and then fix it?" What's funny is you really can't, it's the worst cacophony to their ears. However, also funny, is that this is how it always is. You launch a site and then begin to notice things.
On the web we so strive for organization. For an easy template to pop our projects into. We want things quick, easy, and clean of the blood of the innocent. This doesn't produce good websites, but it does create award winning ulcers and nights of restless slumber.
So we all need to take a deep breath. Grab our clients by the hand, and tell them it's all right. It's okay. We can fix that. It'll take just a few hours.
Why will this work? Because a website is never done any way. Even books print numerous editions. We can do the same on the web, in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost.
Posted by Jesse Poe on December 3 at 11:24 AM
Ok, so to be honest my google reader is not full of just PR, tech and media feeds, it is a bit of everything, and one of my favorites is GOOD.is.
I had to weigh in about the importance of residual waste as well and to make my point I turned to my job and how here we use all parts of the chicken at DMDxd.
When you are planning an event, what is your residual waste, and how can you then turn that into stock for a great soup?
Here’s a check list:
1. Audio
2. Video
3. Social Media
4. Photos
5. Copy
Audio, interview people there, the speakers, the crowd, little meetings, whatever. Turn it into a Podcast.
Video, sure your filming the talk or the ribbon cutting or ball dropping etc., but what about in the dressing room, in the cab, behind the scenes. Run it through iMovie and put it on Youtube (no more than 2 mins please).
Social Media, do you have an established #ashtag set up for people to follow, or even a twitter account specific to the event? Can people Facebook connect when they arrive, how are you looping these things around your event and back into your business. A guest book can be so many things these days, if it’s fun, easy and there, people will do it.
Photos, yep those are still important, even if you on the same page and have already hired a photographer or two, what about on the fly? Your cell phone? I played a festival where once you got off stage each performer was given a video camera they could keep with them for the next couple hours, now that was cool, and footage everyone wanted to see, places most people couldn’t get and priceless candidacy. What about just leaving disposable cameras at tables, and sticking a Flickr URL on the camera letting people know, the photos they snap will be uploaded. And you can get the ball rolling behind the scenes with a live feed to flickr from your cell or whatever, while the event is going on.
Copy, microblogging the event, compiling that afterwards into a more blown out blog post, straightened up and polished into a whitepaper or article that you purpose to a magazine, or someone else’s blog.
The idea is that if you have an event, use the whole chicken. And remember, that event can be something as simple as a tweet-up or you name it, brangelina doesn’t have to attend to make it an event, just you and your great ideas.
(an example of DMD doing this can be found here, and more if you like, drop us a line.)
Posted by Jesse Poe on November 25 at 12:46 PM
I am 34 (stated for demographic purposes).
I just read my first book on my iPhone, it was free, I enjoyed it, and now I have purchased my first eBook as a result, your talking about a man who treasures even the smell of a hardback. Why did I buy it, because I got one for free the content was good and I wanted more.
I got the NY Times app for free and now I have a weekend subscription. Why the content was good and I wanted more of it and in the way I wanted it. During the week I want it on the screen, on the weekends in bed with coffee.
I got the WSJ app, loved it, more than the NY Times. Murdoch canned the free app, I erased it. I got a deal in the mail for daily subscription to the WSJ less than my weekend subscription to the Times.... went right in the trash. No way would I want to give my money to someone who keeps information from people.
There are lots of people like me, and more each day, everyone younger than I for sure.
People think the music industry has tanked, and it has, but did you know that the wages of musicians have gone up?
There have been even more recent posts on the same idea that I have seen. If you check my google reader, you'll find them marked there.
The problem is not making money, the problem is out of date business models. There is plenty of money to be made everyday, however how to make it is changing and so should we.
Here is a very quick story:
1. worked for a very important literary journal (left unnamed out of respect)
2. reader/contributor base was monitored by the obituary section, so as to not waste money sending things to dead people.
3. young talented writers were turned away, why? because the reader base wouldn't like new fresh writing.
4. young talented writers posted their work on line
5. the review is now out of business
6. I have stayed in touch with a couple of the young writers who submitted, and they are now onto their 3 and 4 book deals. I think Clay has jus done his 5th!
So would you rather be well known for great thinking and insight, a voice of authority and point of reference, or would you rather have a small email list and follow the Unnamed Dead Journal above? Topics: Google, Internet, social_networking, strategy0 CommentsRead Full Post
Posted by Jesse Poe on November 24 at 11:24 AM
From Leon Kadoch to Ben Parr, everybody is talking about the recent changes to LinkedIn.
It has been 2 years coming and I am happy for the changes however minimal they are, but much more excited about the possibilities that might arise as a result.
The most obvious would be an integration of services such as Plocky or the like, where I could easily connect my Linked In to my social networks that I have built via Twitter, or reconnected with on Facebook, or even found through forums for change like GOOD.is.
Asking people to add you in one place and then come join you in another is tedious, and although everyone wants to have the stamp on the town square they should realize that if they were to simply make the town square centralized and easy to get to, more people would congregate there instead of staying at home.
There was a question, getting passed around twitter the other day:
LinkedIn to what?
I don't agree, but it begs the question, how has LinkedIn failed if people aren't easily seeing the benefit of their service?
I have found LinkedIn useful realizing from the begining that it is what you put into it, as any platform is. I have found it very useful for those close enough to me that they are willing to then go to another platform to friend me, however it can often be a rather bottom up feed source.
I run an engaging and organic twitter account, which although small consists of people I have engaged and built a dialogue with. If I put their twitter name into a tweet, I am sure that I will get not only a response, but a "threaded" conversation.
Britney does not follow me, but quite a few CEOs of cool companies do.
So think about this LinkedIn and those thinking of building another platform for yet another social community, someone who is looking for a leg up, and is intrigued by the information I give out on twitter, they are going to do the click work to find me and Link in with me, maybe, and I am glad to help. However, a CEO or other possible future client, who finds the material I tweet interesting, is probably going to keep following my links when they see them, but it is going to be a long slow reeling in process to "linking in" with them. During that process, they could have had me consulting them on the functionality of their site and its flow, or perhaps redesigning it from the ground up.
I might have lost that chance to some kid in their mail room who says he knows a guy who knows html, thinking he is doing his company a service. While I am slowly reeling them in from twitter to LinkedIn, they have lost the chance of having an effective site and outreach and way to use that site right now as a tool.
The operative word is "right now".
We want to put 2 & 2 together right now, because we might need 4 to get us through a choppy quarter, or for the launch of our most innovative product or service to date.
LinkedIn and others should think about this and less about the popularity of their own site and brand and they should do so fast before Google decides to push their Google Profiles, If a brand doesn't serve me, then I am going to remember its name, I am going to remember it as something that didn't work and not return. However, the first person to connect us conveniently and across platforms will win my loyalty and surely that of every other person in business, they won't even need a brand name, they'll just sell the service and retire in the Caribbeans.
Posted by Rowland Hobbs on November 17 at 4:32 PM
Last time I gave some advice, it was to Gamestop for their flawed mobile marketing campaign that sent me to a closed store in pursuit of a game. I haven't received another mobile alert from them, despite my pre-ordering Assassin's Creed II last night for PS3. So clearly my advice is being considered valuable.
Today's down-and-dirty trick is something everyone can use. And it's simple, too. As I said in the headline, and will explain here, you should put no roadblocks between your audience and your content.
None.
I don't care if you depend on advertising. I don't care how important your site metrics are. If you read any sort of strategic texts these days, there is a prevailing call to arms for all of us web folk. That is: bring the content to your audience, don't drag them kicking and screaming to you.
I am bringing this up now because I am angry at one of the RSS feeds in my Google Reader. They think they're cute. They send out a headline, and then a tiny bit of lead-in text, and then try to drive me to their site to get the pay-off.
Maybe for other users this works. It doesn't for me. Any sneaky feed that tries to stick-and-carrot me away from my precious Google Reader home base faces the wrath of my "Mark All As Read" button. I will not be lured. I am a busy business man with busy business things to do. Like write blog posts mocking you.
So here's a tip. If you're going to RSS your blog or site (which, God almighty, you had better) do not give a summary. Do not give a link. Give the post. You will earn the hearts and minds of Google Reader junkies like me everywhere. For example, if we really like one of your posts, we'll click to it so we can link to it in our Twitters or blogs.
The blogs that play games with my heart do not earn this privilege, only my seething rage and hardcore profanity.
This works everywhere else, too.
1. Allow your YouTube videos to be embedded, like this brave Universal artist Chamillionaire who may be in trouble with his bosses, but just earned himself a space in social media's fleeting spotlight. (PS: see how I linked to Mashable there? That is because they give me full posts in my RSS reader. If this post was not in my reader, I would not have linked it).
2. Do not ask users forty questions to download a "white paper" that is basically a long and flowing advertisement for your services. (Here at the DMD Network, we give those away for a click of a link.)
3. And, for God sakes, please please please do not send me on a wild goose chase to find a deal or a bit of information that you have advertised prominently in your email communications. Oh that gets my goat.com something fierce.
So again, the key takeaway? It's give away. Your content for free, and as simply and quickly as possible, that is. You want to give your audience every reason to read and engage and share what you're creating... not scare them away and fill them with fury. Topics: Internet, social_networking, strategy, web_design5 CommentsRead Full Post
DMDxd got a chance to chat with Janet Meiners Thaeler about her new book, "I Need a Killer Press Release, Now What??"
We will also be giving away free copies of the book on Friday. To win a copy leave a comment and winners will be chosen randomly on 11/20.
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What's your elevator pitch for I Need a Killer Press Release, Now What?
You've thought about pitching your news to the media. Now learn how to pitch your news to a search engine.
Why did you need to write this book?
Too many small business owners and PR firms miss opportunities because they don't understand SEO or know the power of online press releases. I've seen these methods work again and again and I want people to know how to use them for their benefit and for their clients.
Who should read this book, and who shouldn’t?
Anyone who wants to get online publicity for their business or for their client. It's a very practical guide. It even has templates for you to use and gives options for any budget.
While my book can be used for businesses of all sizes I don't go into detail about traditional wire services. I will in a future book.
Give it to us quick: Why can’t we just slap a standard press release on the Internet?
It just won't get the visibility you desire - you need to use a news distribution web site that has authority and gets your news on the top online news sources. I go over how to do this in the book.
Can you give our readers a few quick tips on making a press release “killer”
1. Use links in your press releases - not just to URLs but keyword links.
2. Include a boilerplate that gives all of the ways to connect with your business online (i.e. social networking sites)
3. Take advantage of trends to become an expert and get top placement in search engines.
4. Include a "call to action" in your press release.
5. After sending a press release, use the many free methods online to get your news even more visibility.
What are the differences between being a community organizer and an online marketer? And what are the similarities?
Here's a great blog post www.connectioncafe.com and chart about that. Sometimes these overlap because building a community online can make for powerful online marketing. However, it's just one part of online marketing.
Clearly in this day and age, print is not the end of the line. What are you doing to expand the reach of I Need a Killer Press Release, Now What? online?
It's important to have a print book - even if it's just sold on Amazon.com. It gets you credibility and there are lots of tools Amazon has to help you sell yourself online.
I set up a Twitter account @onlineprbook and a blog www.OnlinePRBook.com/blog I've partnered with folks like Joan Stewart of The Publicity Hound and PRWeb. I speak at events and conferences.
That said, I hope not to do another print book. They are so quickly outdated and I prefer an ebook. They just haven't reached the respect that an actual book has.
We love that you have a money back guarantee on your book. Do you feel it’ll contribute to stronger sales?
I'm not sure how many people know about it but if they did, yes it should. I also give free copies to bloggers if they agree to post a review. I've had people say the book was worth far more than they paid.
If the book is not enough for you, I'm preparing a DVD that will show you the main tools that I use. I walk you through the steps of keyword research, submitting your news and promoting it. It will be priced a bit more but it's me spending hours teaching you what took me years to learn. My video editor has already seen success just through passive learning he's done editing the DVD.
My Killer Press Releases DVD will be out next month (December 2009) - watch my site for more information.
And join Janet for her free webinar Wednesday the 18th on PRWeb.
Posted by Jesse Poe on November 16 at 12:33 PM
So you’ve seen the success of companies such as Comcast or Best Buy, who have used Twitter to not only engage their customers but also to interact with, satisfy and maintain them.
What if that model is not you? You work in or own a small business of twenty people or even less; you are effective and nimble, but unable to dedicate a person to man a full time social media outreach program, let alone a team. Your clients or customers are happy, because you do good work, but you see the opportunities passing you by in the more than present online world.
You see social media leaders such as David Armano at Dachis Group showing you models such as this one:
and however brilliant and well thought out, it is just not something you can achieve, because you chart looks more like this:
What can you do?
You’re not sure if your Twitter is even working, you send out good information, forward interesting links, and even get some RTs or mentions now and then, but the phone is not ringing with new business, and your inbox is filled with clients you won the old fashioned way, and hope you can continue to maintain.
First of all, if the above is correct you’re doing good. Your tie is straight your nails are clean, your basics are covered, you have a presence. It may seem small compared to others, but if the above is true than it is a quality group. If you manage accounts for artists and you have 1,000 followers, which are 970 spambots, 3 sports teams and 15 news feeds, you’re not really serving yourself, let alone your clients.
100 dedicated followers who you can interact with, who might actually pass your info along to other potential clients is what you need. And it will grow naturally.
So you have your basics covered and now you need to get noticed, you want to boost that natural growth. Protein supplements? No.
Get out there! Where is the conversation or where do you think it might be?
About 2 months ago (54 days ago to be exact) Google launched Sidewiki, I started using it and kept up a simple but active presence on it. It wasn’t hard to do, and I set up a simple approach that 50 days later got me mentioned on Google’s own Blog for offering up great insights.
Method:
Peruse my google reader each morning.
Keep in mind what I had read while writing our daily DMDxd blog.
Post the blog and then take that blog to where the conversation was going on, instead of expecting people to somehow stumble upon our blog hungry for a good read.
Excerpting, and extracting from what I had already written, adding a line or two to personalize to the conversation context I was placing it in a Google’s Sidewiki and then linking it back to the blog on our company site. Sometimes, if there was a lot of people talking about the same thing, I would link them to another article where my sidewiki would be, instead of directly to our site. This allowed them to see what others were saying as well and see my own comments in context and letting the strength of it speak for itself.
Results:
Traction and Engagement. It’s one thing if you invite friends over for tea, it’s another thing if you show up at their place with tea ready and some warm crumpets.
Raised Traffic. The increase in traffic was coming from referring sites such as Mashable, Gizmodo, ArsTechinca and places who wouldn’t have necessary promoted us, but bringing the conversation to them there, led people to us.
Featured.Google’s blog took notice and featured us here at DMDxd along with 9 others who they found bringing value to this new medium of interaction. Ranked 1,949 most important site, with Google itself being number one and Facebook number 2 (for perspective) you can imagine that traffic from this alone was well worth the extra 10 mins a day to take our blog to where the conversation was actually happening.
Posted by Jesse Poe on November 9 at 12:41 PM
One of the great things about blogs is that you can find out about so many wonderful and user specific posts, but primarily after the fact. It’s always the morning after.
Twitter has helped with that, but micro-blogging is also a deluge that can sweep your night away without you ever getting out to enjoy it. (or you day for that matter!)
Not only will this elevate the aforementioned, should have, could have scenario, it is an amazing possibility for business.
Thinking about how to use this now, will allow businesses to be ready at the gate when Twitter launches this.
Ok we know that at first it is going to be for certain locations using Yahoo!’s Where on Earth IDs (WOEIDs) such as NYC, London, San Francisco etc. as mentioned.
But just because Boise Idaho may not be the first place to launch, doesn’t mean that you can still get your ideas ready and in motion, and be all the more effective for it.
Here are few ideas as to how your business can start to game plan for this wonderful opportunity.
A tweet screen or kiosk where people can tweet that they are there at your place of business and receive a discount, free appetizer, etc. Much like Foursquare, but in a in house immediate response way, that would then drive the number of tweets about your specific business location into the local trending topics.
Reverse search, find the people who might be in your part of the city or neighborhood looking for the ball game or a quiet place to study for exams, reach out to them with twitter and invite them over, with clear and timely calls to action. (how much I would have loved this for the presidential debates)
Run specials on what people want and when. I’m looking for a new notebook to journal in, you’ve got them in your coffee shop, free cup of coffee with the purchase of a notebook. Once I’m there in your coffee shop, then the play yours, is the light right, is the coffee good, is the staff friendly and warm. No technology can make up for that, but it can get people in your door to find out!
The thing is to start now. Start thinking, how can I use local trends to engage my public? To find my public? To help my public find me? To give them what they want?
Start now, and remember that if the fit is not right, both you and your public will be uncomfortable with it. It should be a natural and creative adaptation of your brand.
Posted by Rowland Hobbs on November 9 at 5:44 AM
Leave a comment on this post. It can be anything, really. Nonsense type. Or your favorite line of poetry. Or a quote from The Simpsons. Or your opinion on the state of the current price of fair trade coffee.
Join us tomorrow for our final segment with Mitch Joel, part 4 of this 4 part interview, where we discuss: The mystery of Bono, who to follow on Twitter, metrics and his book Six Pixels of Separation.
Posted by Jesse Poe on October 2 at 10:42 AM
Have you ever started down a street and then got a strange feeling, turned around, walked back to the corner and went down another street for no other reason than, the street felt wrong?
I make a point to always follow my intuition even if means I might look a bit silly, or have to go out of my way sometimes. The thing is though, there are no metrics on these things.
I never know if a piano didn't fall on my head because I don't go back to check, and then if I did go back to check how would I keep from getting into some sort of Schrödinger's cat paradox.
The good thing is that there are metrics on the T-Pain App I wrote about on 9/4 and 9/9.
300,000 + downloads in 3 weeks
14,000 + downloads a day
66 mins the average time spent on the app
12.5 the average times each have opened the app
4. 1 MILLION user-generated songs made by the users of the app
Now they have branched out with the release of I'm on a Boat by Lonely Island featuring T-Pain, lowering the price creating an engaging and fun youtube contest.
Amazing how simple success can be, and that it can actually be monitored, measured and maintained. The key is the simplicity, in contrast look at the failure of Ralph Lauren's recent QR code 10 step fiasco.
Reminds me of my first lesson on composition in high school art class: KISS keep it simple stupid.
Kudos to Smule for keeping it simple and on their success!
This morning I got a video in my email that I immediately put on my Facebook, passed it around my office and mailed it to my brother who is a bartender in Indiana.
We have all heard about the weird success of videos on youtube. With 20 hours of video uploaded to youtube a minute, what makes one video go viral and another not, well most of them not.
Is it the inclusion of famous people, it is being noted and spoken about by social influencers, is it being tech-savy, or perhaps having of the moment popculture relevance?
Let’s look at an opposing video unsuccessful video vs. today’s success.
Recognize this guy? Don’t worry if you don’t. Here’s the 10 sec. break down:
WASP college kid, “remixes” Lady Gaga to complain about how Obama is stealing his money, or maybe he means his parents money. He’s young, he’s “cool”, he even made it on a Macbook! But not even being blogged about by Meghan McCain or being featured by Perez Hilton made this go viral.
Watch it, tell me why you didn’t immediately put it on your Facebook page or send it to your family and friends? Perhaps because Seattle has some of the best social services in the nation, or that University of Washington, which is prominently featured in the back ground, is a great school that costs less than most Community Colleges thanks to taxes.
Perhaps it’s just that no one can connect to it for any number of reasons. Not even with an auto-tuner is it in-tune with what most people really feel (regardless what some news stations purport).
Result: since April 08, 2009 it has gotten 147,854 views one of which was mine.
Now how about this one: 648,298 views in the last 15 hours.
It’s smart, honest, funny, and most of all it connects to people in a way they want to share. If you attribute it to star power, then I guess the obvious question would be what about other viral videos without stars?
I am juxtaposing these two because of the content, they serve as perfect bookends.
Meghan McCain in describing why this "Lady Gaga" video was so great a sure to go viral said,
“Unlike the young conservative rappers, this video is self-aware—it is campy satire, and isn’t attempting to be taken as seriously as the Brooks Brothers-wearing rappers......It is just as important for us to battle with ideas as it is pop culture. And instead of letting the writers at SNL and The Daily Show have all the fun—more often than not making fun of Republicans—we should be fighting back with the power of our own viral videos.”
And here is a very serious, yet serously funny and attention grabbing video made by people who care about the subject for real, and care about the people it will effect.
I guess it comes down to the sincerity of what you do, not how you do it.
Maybe it is all the battle talk, we don’t want to do battle. We want to pass on videos to each other which mean something to us, that make us laugh, or feel good. Something to bring us together.
The feeling of losing "friends" on Twitter can be an odd one. Why does it matter and what is the impact on your social capital? Is it personal? If not, should it be? Topics: , social_networking5 CommentsRead Full Post
Data designers are the new DJ's. Ok, maybe not but increasing demand and polish given to data sets by designers to help us consume more data online I believe to be one factor in the increased interest in visual thinking. Topics: , , , , , , information_architecture, social_networking, strategy5 CommentsRead Full Post
Tweets are seen as a scourge that depersonalizes and trivializes but they actually improve conversation between humans. Until you feel the magic you may never know but I think this chart could help. Topics: social_networking3 CommentsRead Full Post
Google stalker? I was surprised, even though I shouldn't have been, that when I Googled "Google Stalking" there was a website devoted entirely to that lurid – but admittedly delightful – activity we all engage in. Topics: Google, Internet, social_networking3 CommentsRead Full Post
Posted by Nadia Ries Shen on February 7 at 7:41 AM
The Microsoft Surface was on display at the sponsors forum at the IxDA '09 conference. It seemed to grab a lot of peoples attention as there was a big group standing around playing with its fun functions. The screen is 30" which enabled people to sit around the table-like screen and interact with it and those around it.
Topics: , , , , social_networking, tools, web_design3 CommentsRead Full Post
Swift.fm is an amazing start-up that allows users to add audio information to tweets creating a radio-station style playlist of music (check out my office ambiance channel here) which is viral-enabled to allow users to engage content in various formats and contexts by highlighting their musical perspective. They are also a breath away from being the #1 Music-specific twitter client by traffic, and with their new platform of locked down branded-wrapped embeddable channels they are soon to be a swift force in creating brand identity, engagement and social conversation on the web (well even more than they already are). We talked about the future of Swift.fm and the future of the web and which direction we see it going: a direction that other like minds across town are quickly developing at diaspora* 
I had two eyes open all night as that not only am I interested in the internet (as it is my field) and especially as it relates to social networking and music (as that is my love), but also because I build social media plans for hip hotels and program their facebook pages in FBML. We toured the hotel and it’s famed analog sound system, met with the event planners and tried a variety of their special brews. Independently, Ed and I both took pictures of the Hotel/bar and showed them to each other, both photos were snapped with our iPhones, yet with surprisingly different results. My photo on the left, doesn’t look cool, but points out one of the cool features of ACE and it’s brilliant design; the curation of space through text and messaging throughout the space Such as this great use of the exit sign:
The great poet Terry Hummer once told me the secret to poetry was to take a flower and expand it’s beauty and properties to become as vast as the cosmos, or to take the cosmos out of the sky and wrap into a language and understanding so tight that you can hand to someone like a flower.
Topics: Internet, media, social_networking, strategy, tools 0 Comments
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