Joel Comm's Blog, page 40

What Makes You Happy?

I love going to trade shows. Of course, the best trade shows are the ones that are centered around an area of personal interest. You won’t find me frequenting shows focused on financial services or jewelry. But if it’s electronics, technology, culture or something else that gets my attention, I’m all-in. Shortly after geeking out at CES 2015, I turned my attention to a show that I had always wanted to attend, but never had… the International Toy Fair in New York City. Why? Because… TOYS! I wanted to experience first-hand the sights, sounds and fun of seeing how the industry treated the business of toys. Would the show floor be packed with grown men playing with gadgets and board games? Or would it be a bunch of stuffy buyers and sellers in suits, treating toys just like any other business? And would I have fun at the show? I’m pleased to say that I had a great time! Any multi-billion dollar industry is going to be about profits. But it was refreshing to see just how passionate the vendors were about the business of making people happy. With a video camera focused on my experience, I played my way through the show floor. There was so much to see and even with two days under my belt, I know I missed a lot. I also stopped to speak with a number of vendors to ask them a key question. I prefaced it by stating that the answer to the question could not be about their company, their brand or the toys they offered. The question was “What makes you happy?” Filmed and produced by Passion Driven Productions filmmaker Jenn Page, the following short film captures the essence of my experience at the Toy Fair. And more importantly, it sends a clear message as to where true happiness comes from. I hope it makes you happy to view it. So now I have to ask you the same question. What makes YOU happy? Please use the comments form below to share your thoughts.

Email is My To-Do List

Everyone has a different method for managing their to-do list. For some, it’s a detailed task manager such as Trello or Asana. There are those who like putting sticky notes (both digital and real) in a place where they are visible. As for me, with decades of email use, I’ve become accustomed to using email, and in particular my inbox, as a to-do list. Email comes in to my business and personal email box. I try to manage stuff as it comes in, replying, filing and deleting messages on a daily basis. I’ve got a ton of folders clearly labeled and fairly organized. Somehow I’ve managed to not mess things up too badly. I’ve tried other methods. My assistants have begged me to use other systems. But I guess you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. (Wait, am I old?) However, that doesn’t mean I don’t have hopes and dreams for more streamlined email. Recently, I’ve had a glimpse at a new tool that IBM is preparing. It’s called IBM Verse. I was first exposed to Verse last year during a special invitation-only event put on by IBM in New York City called a “Thinkathon.” Along with thirty other influencers, I had the opportunity to learn more about what IBM is doing to create a new way to get things done. (#NewWayToWork) You should know this is not a paid post. I’m not being compensated in any way for my comments. However, I have been building a relationship with a number of people on the IBM team and am really happy to see a new and exciting culture rising up amongst the new breed of IBM employees. This ain’t your daddy’s IBM, gang. There are some very smart and progressive initiatives rising up from the former suit, tie and wingtip crowd. I’ve had an opportunity to see a little bit behind the scenes of #IBMVerse, and I’ve got to say that there are a number of features which I could really see as improving my email experience. You’ll be hearing more about Verse in the months to come, I’m sure. For now, I’ve got a video I want to share with you. While in Austin for the massive SXSW 2015 conference, I was invited to participate in a pedicab interview to discuss email, and the things I wish my email could do better. I was interviewed on my way over to the Long Center to enjoy a filming of The Jimmy Kimmel Live show (which was great fun!) So instead of “Walking with Joel”, I invite you to “Pedicabbing with Joel.” Enjoy What do you wish your email could do? Please share your thoughts in the comments below!

Seeing is Believing… and Feeling

Do you remember the first time you sent a text message to a friend on your mobile phone? Odds are it was using alphanumerics. Odds are you felt both delight at being able to send words and sentences via your phone, while at the same time encumbered by the complexity of making it happen. Fast-forward to today. Text messaging has not only become incredibly simple, thanks to mobiles’ implementation full keyboards, autocomplete and voice recognition, but visual features have kicked it up a notch as well. Emojis, which were once thought of as cutesy icons reserved for teenagers with perpetual OMG and ROFLMAO syndrome, have become a legitimate and well-adopted way for us to communicate with each other. Whether we’re feeling happy, sad, angry, silly, hungry, tired, flirty or any other emotion, there are emojis which sum up our feelings with one character stroke. Of course, this ability to share our thoughts and feelings visually has crossed the threshold of mobile and become part of the social fabric. Facebook now invites us to share how we are feeling as part of any update. So whether you are feeling blessed, determined, annoyed, motivated, nostalgic, lost or any of several dozens of emotions, we are able to add a more defined human element to our posts than our words may be able to communicate. As if emojis weren’t enough, Facebook allows us to communicate with each other via messenger and in our comments using “stickers”. Still and animated cartoons from both well-known and obscure or new original characters, stickers are a fun and playful way to comment publicly or privately. I have a confession to make. I am a sticker fiend. I so enjoy replying to my friends with the perfect sticker. A picture, after all, can say a thousand words. Whether it’s Animal from the Muppets, Pusheen (the fat cat with character) or the simple Facebook big “thumb up” like, stickers effectively and expediently can add feeling or humor to a conversation. My personal favorite is a little guy named “Tuzki”. So if a picture says a thousand words, what happens when you take a picture and add words to it? I see it as the next level of sharing thoughts and feelings, as well as entertaining. Memes are nothing new. A variety of websites have made it simple to take a photo and add Impact font words to it. Unless you are familiar with photoshop, placing text on images can be a daunting task. We’ve already got apps with dozens of filters that raise all of our photo proficiency to the next level. But now there are apps which allow us to place professional-grade designer text on our photos. My favorite for iOS is called WordSwag. Those on the Android platform would do well to install PicLab. Either of these apps allow you to embellish your photo with stylized text which looks very impressive. Simply select your photo, type in your words, select from dozens of styles and save your photo to the social stream of your choice. Whether you are sharing your own thoughts or quoting someone else, these “photoquotes” as I have dubbed them, are highly effective in bringing engagement from your audience. When I started posting my own thoughts with photos of myself, I noticed a sharp uptick in the number of likes, comments and shares. People love to engage with engaging photoquotes! Personally, I create photoquotes using the same goals as when I speak or write. I’m either creating content to inspire, teach or entertain. Often, it’s a combination of any or all of these. In Summer of 2014, I was asked to speak at a marketing event in my hometown of Denver, Colorado. As I had been on the road for a couple weeks, I hadn’t given much thought to what I was going to speak on. The day before I was scheduled, one of the attendees asked me about my topic, so I asked what they would like to hear from me. She mentioned that she really enjoyed the photoquotes I had been posting on social media, and she was curious as to the genesis of some of them. I was intrigued by the idea and crafted an entire presentation around my more popular photoquotes and the story behind them. As it turned out, the images were just as engaging on the big screen and people really enjoyed hearing the story behind the story. My words and pictures were dubbed “social poetry” by one of the attendees. It’s become one of my goals to inspire others to share their own social poetry. After all, we’ve all got something to say. Why not say it with words and pictures? The I enjoyed the concept so much that I turned my photoquotes into a book titled “Social Poetry: Boosting Engagement and Encouraging Conversation by Using Inspirational, Educational and Entertaining Photoquotes.” They say that seeing is believing. I know you’ve got some thoughts on the subject, so please use the comments field below to share them!

Google Banned Me from Helpouts

Google is currently the King of search. The sheer amount of data which resides on Google servers (67,000,000,000 pages indexed) combined with the staggering number of searches per day (5,740,000,000 in 2014), makes Google the top dog. Google is also a very innovative company, encouraging employees to try new things. With a market capitalization of $250 BILLION dollars, they’ve got plenty of room to play in the sandbox. Sometimes they get it right. But sometimes they get it wrong. Google Buzz, Google Wave, Google Knol and Google Reader join many other projects in the Google graveyard. Some of them were good ideas with poor implementation or adoption. Others were just bad ideas. Google Helpouts, a person-to-person live helpline leveraging Hangouts technology, has just joined the list of projects that will be laid to rest in the Google graveyard. This email was just sent to members of Google Helpouts: I can’t say I’m surprised. Helpouts had a great deal of promise. A way for people with expertise and authority to monetize their time by providing live coaching for those seeking advice, you could login to Helpouts and pay by the minute or time block and video-conference live to get the answers you needed. I signed up for Helpouts very early on and did a number of coaching sessions, all of which received 5-star feedback from those I consulted. As the individual who has taught tens of thousands of people how to make money with Google AdSense via my books, products and trainings, I figured it was very natural to create a product which would help people leverage Google’s Helpouts product. I was a big fan. (Still am and it’s disappointing to see that they failed.) A partner and I set up a training product at HelpoutsProfits.com. We opened the doors to customers and received plenty of excellent feedback. Google wrote and asked that we change the name of the product since Helpouts was a copymark of theirs. I told them “no problem” and we renamed the product ThePaidExpert.com. It was the same training with a different, and more accurate, branding. It was around the same time that I showed up for a scheduled Google Helpouts session and discovered I was face-to-face with a member of the Helpouts team. Turned out they were aware of my product and decided to do some recon on me. The guy on the other end was very nice. I explained what I was doing and what the product was all about. My goal was to offer a product which would help people leverage the power of Helpouts to grow their business and brand. About a week later, I received this email. How about that. All attempts to contact the Helpouts team were met with “Our decision is final.” I’m still not exactly sure what the problem was. I complied with changing the name of the product immediately. I told the Helpouts team precisely what I was doing. My account was compliant. And the feedback from Helpouts I delivered was flawless. I believe, and I might be wrong, that the Helpouts team didn’t want anyone profiting off teaching others how to profit with their system. In fact, I got the feeling that while they had a monetization system in place, they weren’t really comfortable with it being a commercial system to begin with. So, they turned away an unpaid evangelist, shutting me out from being able to do my own Helpouts. Even today, when I go to helpouts.google.com with the banned account, I am greeted by this reminder. I really don’t have ill will against Google or the Helpouts team. What bothers me most is that they had a ally that wanted to help promote their product and spread the word. They knew they were working with a reasonable person willing to make adjustments as required. In fact, the ban took place over a year ago. I decided not to write about it at that time because I didn’t want to give even the slightest appearance of vindictiveness. If anyone asked me about Helpouts, I told them that I was still a proponent of the product. Now that they are shutting their doors, I feel it’s appropriate to discuss it, if for now other reason that the heavy-handed approach that just cuts off a customer without providing a reason (and a rememdy) is just bad business. Unfortunately, Google has a reputation for treating people this way with many of their products. While they must be aware and alert to fraud that is inevitably a very real threat to their products, there’s no shortage of good people who have lost AdSense or AdWords accounts without explanation. I’m not saying that partnering with me, instead of banning me, would have resulted in a successful product for Google. But it couldn’t have hurt. Rest in Peace, Google Helpouts. I forgive you.