If you don’t have a GPS for your car you should buy one today. Imagine never printing Google maps or getting lost again. Drive around cities that you have no knowledge of with no problem. Buy.com has an insane deal of $124 after rebate.
My Inbox is also my To-Do list. If there’s a message that is part of an important project it stays in the box until it gets done. This can be a great productivity booster – many times if I am unsure about the importance of a project I leave it in the inbox. If I don’t remember what it was about by the time it hits the bottom of the box (or if the original requestor hasn’t asked about it in the 4 months it took to get to the bottom of the inbox) that’s an alert that perhaps that TPS report (re: Office Space) wasn’t that urgent, or it’s time for me to get to something I have been putting off.
I had started kicking a project around in the Summer that is moving again. As part of the first attempt to start this project I had asked some social media luminaries to give their opinions on some marketing techniques and whether they are gaining ground or dying.
As most social media consultants are full of crap and/or have an aversion to real work, I only received a response from Ron. His response has made it to the bottom of the inbox, and as he had the courtesy to respond I cannot let decent content go unused (and Ron – if this is still your opinion you could cross-post to this and skip writing on Thanksgiving day!).
I asked:
Is eMail dying?
1)email is not dying — yet. Email is something that is very popular for
people over a certain age. The younger folks don’t use email. They
text message, instant message, send bulletins, etc. I don’t know what
these folks are going to do when they need to get a job and the job
requires email. Perhaps that’s the only place that they’ll use it.
Or perhaps, they’ll be the catalyst for bringing in the email
replacement technology.
I agree, email is starting to slide from peak profitability, but will be profitable for a long time.
Is corporate blogging on the rise?
2)Blogging = Transparency — and so far, most companies still do not
have the intestinal fortitude for such openness. And it’ll get worse
before it gets better. Just wait for the first lawsuit where
Sarbanes-Oxley is invoked against a blog posting:-)
It’s interesting to me how blogging is growing from smaller companies and working it’s way up. The fewer layers of bureaucracy, the easier it is for blogs to grow. If your company has a culture of red tape, your bloggers can’t grow through the concrete sidewalk.
The growth of marketing departments as publishing companies:
3) Every Organization is a publishing Organization: always has been.
It’s just that the company’s customers became publishers too!
Always has been, but now every company has the infrastructure to spread further than only where trade magazines used to tread.
Online Video:
4)Online Video — The big news this year in Online Video is that
AppleTV, while not a perfect device, is a wormhole hole in the
Cable/Satellite space-time-continuumJ I can now get video podcasts
and YouTube videos into my livingroom. This is a major Crossing The
Chasm requirement.
My head hurts and I feel pity for Network TV execs. Between iTunes, Apple TV, Slingboxes, DVRs, etc. Things are only going to get messier. Can I have Heroes back on iTunes please?
Snack Media:
5) Online Video Attention Span. Back to the younger generation.
These kids have the attention span of a gnat. They want their
content quick and brief. What’s interesting, with YouTube, is that us
older folks may be being retrained. I no longer have the patience to
sit down and watch a 1 hour show”
Feeds:
6) RSS Feeds — Syndicate everything! RSS feeds are just starting to
show up in not traditional publishing areas like corporate websites
who syndicate the MOST OBVIOUS yet LEAST IMPACTFUL piece: their press
releases. More companies will start to experiment with RSS Feeds next
year.
I think this area needs a quantum leap – Feeds alone can’t cross the chasm. Maybe Google Reader will continue to spread. Why’s this stuff not in Office?
Mashups:
7) RSS Feeds + Mashups. The release of Yahoo Pipes, Microsoft Popfly,
and Google Mashup (plus apps from Intel and IBM) offer great
opportunities for companies that are looking to take advantage of the
growth of RSS Feeds. If companies decide to “Syndicate Everything,”
these fledgling tools may become more of a necessity to help filter
the information torrent.
Wow, I’d forgotten all about Pipes. If only there were more hours in the day.
8) SEO isn’t Dying…it’s Already dead! “Black Hat” SEO is dead. Â Never bet against the
House and never bet against Google. Â Their business is predicated on
matching search results to good content. Â Produce good content,
frequently, on a site that stays around for a while and Google will
reward you handsomely.
I think SEO is becoming more respectable as it’s evolving into copywriting.
Thanks Ron!
For the life of me I can’t remember if I first read of it in Covey’s 7 Habits
So many times in life you are working as hard as you can but eventually you start to go off track in regards to your ultimate goal. You are climbing the ladder as fast as you can, faster than the competition, only to realize the ladder is up against the wrong building. This ties into beginning with the end in mind, one of Covey’s habits – you have to start from your ultimate goal and work backwards. Otherwise you might find yourself at the top of the wrong ladder.
The ladder has many implications. If you can convince your competition to climb the wrong ladder you may not have to climb at a pace that will cost you your marriage, children, whatever.
The holiday break is a great time for a strategy check. If you have not read 7 Habits, that’s the best advice I can give you. Otherwise, stop worrying about the next rung and make sure your ladder is leaning on the right building.
You can check out the latest audio program live from Studio N. The lovely Carin vs. the Cranky old man.
I hope your weekend went well. Welcome to a short week.
Seth Godin had a good post today stating that Gift Cards are for Chumps. First, I would state that the term “chump” is vastly underutilized, so I’m glad to see it. Second is what I feel is his more important point: Christmas has become a holiday about shopping, not about giving.
I’ve noticed that the purpose behind purchases made with disposable income has changed. I first reached Seth’s point with my own eyes while discussing Christmas gifts with my wife. She was not happy that I have an Amazon wish list of things I really want. She felt that there was no surprise if I got items off my wish list, and that’s when I got the bulb over my head – I said “I’m really not into being surprised, and if I got everything on that list I’d be happy – so really this is about what you want to feel about giving me a gift.” Being a smart husband I left out the logical extension of this arguement – You want to try and surprise me with a great gift I don’t know about, even at the risk of getting me something I don’t want.
The sad thing is that I also realized I do this to myself. One day after buying a DVD at Best Buy I came home and realized I was throwing it on a pile of about a dozen other DVDs I haven’t gotten around to watching yet. Again the bulb lit up – I was not buying the DVD to watch it, I was laying down money for the fantasy of me actually sitting down to have a quiet night of Jet Li goodness. DVDs are no different than lottery tickets, I’m paying for the dream not reality.
So, what’s the Marketing punchline here? One is what I think of as a sad one – the culture of selling crap that nobody REALLY needs has no end in sight. The other is that maybe some people will stand up and do something worthwhile for the holidays rather than buying more crap that will end up in the landfill by the summer.
If you are in the Boston area I highly recommend both the MATCH School and the Franciscan Hospital for Children. Now where’s that Swarovski Crystal I need to wrap for Carin…
Today I spent most of the day on a return flight from San Francisco. I flew out back on Tuesday and was working the QCon show through Friday. We then stayed at the Columbus Motor Inn (ultimate bargain) for the weekend to hang out with my brother and a guy named W. About 10 years ago I lived in Walnut Creek for about a year and I still miss that area. If not for family in the East I would gladly give up the snow here for the hills there.
Carin and I hiked up to Coit Tower, this is much better than driving up there because you get to check out some of the homes in the Historic Telegraph Hill neighborhood, which on a good day I would admit to being perhaps cooler than even Nantucket. We also enjoyed some Tea in the Japanese Garden.
In true new media fashion, I twittered about being in town and Jose shouted back
and we grabbed a beer after work on Friday. Mitch Joel was also in town but I was unable to break away to the Googleplex mid-week.
Two other random things from the weekend: I was struck by the irony that tag sales don’t have tags. I saw many neighborhood sales, but I wasn’t willing to dig through the stuff when I knew I could look it up on eBay or Craig’s List – Lesson 1: Put your Tag Sale stuff on Craig’s list instead of putting up signs around the neighborhood.
Lesson 2: I can’t stop playing Kanye West‘s Good Life (clean version so as not to disturb the neighbors and relatives).
So I was called out on twitter this weekend. I posted:
“Sorry, I can’t see any value in utterz… anyone…. anyone…”.
All I’ve seen are posts in Twitter that link to the Utterz recordings. In true new media style I got a twitter back from the founder!
“simedia @themshow fan of your blog. how can we improve utterz to provide the value you’re seeking?”
And I’m stuck. As I refuse to be someone who just complains about things on the web, I’ve painted myself into a corner and have to put up or shut up. The good news is that I was at a conference at MIT for the weekend on software development (yes, I know, the non-stop excitement of the new media rockstar lifestyle), so I did have time to set up an account, take the tour and test drive.
My initial befuddlement was viewing Utterz as some kind of twitter add-on, a MyChingo variation (which is called Mochilla now maybe? I can’t keep this stuff straight, I’m just a simple caveman…).
After a short run I’m thinking it’s a Twitter replacement – a similar tool for the content producer, but with greater functionality. The question then becomes how will these two brands compete? One thing is obvious, that Mitch Joel hit on earlier this week – there’s a lot of funky things going on with cell phones becoming more powerful multimedia devices and it’s time to start playing around to see what kind of trouble we can get into.
If you’ve done anything cool on this front your comments would be appreciated.
So this is my last time rambling about Podcamp. C.C. Chapman has had about 1,000,000 comments on his post talking about podcamp not being free. I’m a bit of a heretic, I remember talking with Bryper about the first podcamp and saying that they should charge for that one to weed out the trick-or-treaters that show up for free stuff and nothing else. There’s a lot of discussion about what makes a conference and what makes a camp. These are all academic arguments that the average person probably isn’t even aware of, never mind give a whizz in the River Kwai about.
Some of my favorite highlights – Eric Rice calling it Podshow 2.0, and Tim Bourquin welcoming everyone to the world of paid conferences. I think that aside from the names, Barcamp and Podcamp are two very different things. From what I’ve seen, Barcamps involve a lot of collaboration, where podcamps are all about education. I can easily see why someone who’s been to Barcamps or Brainjams would not be as excited about Podcamp, it’s not the same experience.
Ok, even I’m getting tired of the “Inside Baseball”. In closing, maybe I don’t get to sleep on the floor for podcamp, but there are still human connections made. There are a lot of people who go to podcamp who know nothing, or next to nothing about new media and they would like the guided tour, not pandemonium.
Here’s a picture of me and Nico, my graphic designer / wordpress genius. I’ve worked with many designers for professional projects, but Nico works on my personal projects. I put the rough graphics of Ronin Marketeer together and then he got it all to work correctly (I hate dealing with tables and I’m pretty lame with stylesheets). I knew there is a point where I’d lose interest in tweaking the code and it would be faster and less headache for a pro to take care of it.
The cool part is that we did this site almost a year ago, and from across the planet – he’s in Argentina. He surprised everyone by flying 30 hours to show up at Podcamp Boston. That alone makes podcamp cool enough for me, and yes I’d be willing to $20 to register for it to show I’m serious about attending…
I also a chance to catch up with all my Canadian friends (why the hell is Canada so much more hip than the US?), and was fortunate enough to meet Anna Farmery from the engaging brand. Next time I’m breaking out the recorder.
For more audio discussion on Podcamp, Technorati, and fighting Sploggers, check out the latest Marketing Over Coffee Marketing Podcast.
Robert Goulet has passed from this world, read more about Goulet here. I didn’t know he was local, but always appreciated his big band, partying sound.
Just prepping for Marketing Over Coffee tomorrow, if Mr. Penn is not wiped out from the VON festivities that everyone is twittering about. Talk to you then…
This is my fave from the show, Clarence and the blur draw you in, but you eventually can’t avoid Julia.
Lots of great discussions yesterday at Podcamp and I’m getting ready to head back into town. Unfortunately we were not able to find anywhere quiet enough to record Marketing Over Coffee, but that ended up being a blessing. On the ride home I realized that without picking up a bizarre specialized cable, I’m not going to be able to record anyway.
I’ll be doing a session at 2pm covering any basic questions anyone still may have. For more photos, check out the set.