Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 382
October 24, 2010
Being A Twitter Snob Is A Good Thing
It annoys many people when they follow you on Twitter and you do not follow them back. Too bad. Don't do it.
The only people you should follow on Twitter are people who are immediately interesting to you or people who might become interesting to you. Ignore the rest. I know, this doesn't sound very "social media," but it's true and it's a needed commodity in a cluttered world (you can read more about why you should be a Twitter Snob right here: The Trouble With Twitter - Confessions Of A Twitter Snob and, if that doesn't get you re-thinking your Twitter strategy, read this: The Dirty Little Secret Of The Twitter Elite). You may think that this reasoning is anti-Social Media or that by not following someone back, you will be insulting them, but if you read the Blog post, The Dirty Little Secret Of The Twitter Elite, you'll understand that even though they may be following you back, they're probably filtering you and/or ignoring you.
But, there's a better reason to not follow back everyone who is following you on Twitter.
Here's a real-life example: the other day, Alistair Croll recommended I check out Tim Carmody on Twitter. Tim has a cool Blog called, Snarkmarket, and is a contributor to Wired. He has 2,221 followers but only follows 414 people. I wasn't immediately struck by Tim's Twitter feed, so I looked at some of the people he was following and I could not believe the quality of people he is connected to. What really shocked me is how few of those people I was following. I hit the Twitter equivalent of pay-dirt.
Who you follow adds to your credibility.
One of the better ways to understand the type of person you are considering to follow is to see who they are following. What interests them? Who piques their curiosity? It's an amazingly powerful barometer to learn and understand more about the person you are about to connect to. In this instance, Carmody gained instant credibility with me. He was following people that I wanted to follow... and these were people that I hoped would find me interesting enough to follow me back as well.
What does following everybody back actually say about you?
If you follow everybody back on Twitter does that mean that you'll accept to connect to everybody? Or, does that mean that you have your Twitter feed automated to accept everybody? Does it mean that you don't care who you follow back? Does it mean that you care so deeply about people that you must follow everybody back? It's hard to tell... and because it's hard to tell, it doesn't ever feel like it matters, or that you care all that much, in the end.
Those who are more selective add value for the new people coming along.
Curating, editing and pruning who you follow is an important step. It helps those new connections sort the wheat from the chaff. It helps quantify that you're in this to really connect. It also sets a standard that you're not going to accept the smart people and the spammers as the same. It says that you're going to take the time (at least a second) to ensure that you're following someone of value. That sounds better than following everyone and giving off the allure of being social, when in reality you're probably filtering them out and not helping the next person who connects with you to better understand what interested you (granted, if you're a brand - or a corporate account - none of this applies: why not follow back everybody who is following you?).
So, what's your take on being a Twitter snob?
Tags:
alistair croll
credibilty
snarkmarket
social media
tim carmody
twitter
twitter elite
twitter feed
twitter snob
twitter strategy
wired
The World Of Macrowikinomics With Don Tapscott
Episode #225 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.
Every once in a while, you get an opportunity to have a conversation with someone who has, literally, changed the game. This Podcast has had more than a few of those over the year, and here's another big one. Without question, Don Tapscott has seen (and been talking about) the changes that are happening right now. He was writing about technology being a business and global game-changer for over thirty years. His latest book, Macrowikinomics (which he co-wrote with Anthony D. Williams), is already a best-seller (and for good reason). HIs last two books, Grown Up Digital and Wikinomics, are also must-have's. In this episode, we look at everything from the modern printing press to the future of business and education. Tapscott even lets us know what he thinks about Google and Apple today. Enjoy the conversation...
You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #225.
Tags:
advertising
anthony d williams
apple
bite size edits
blog
blogging
blue sky factory
book oven
cast of dads
cc chapman
chris brogan
christopher s penn
david usher
digital dads
digital marketing
don tapscott
escape velocity
facebook
facebook group
google
grown up digital
hugh mcguire
human business works
iambik
in over your head
itunes
julien smith
librivox
macrowikinomics
malcolm gladwell
man on the go
managing the gray
marie mai
marketing
marketing over coffee
media hacks
new marketing labs
online social network
podcast
podcasting
six pixels of separation
small change
social media 101
social media marketing
strategy
the new yorker
third tribe marketing
trust agents
twist image
wikinomics
October 23, 2010
Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #18
Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?
My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Rednod, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for each other (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".
Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:
A Family Resemblance of Obsessions - Snarkmarket . " Matthew Ingram pointed me at Snarkmarket recently, and I felt dumb for not having been reading it sooner. It's chock-full of long, chewy, thoughtful posts, and you may well already have seen it; but I'd be remiss in not pointing it out... A recent post looks at the nature of language, and points to author Tim Carmody 's Bookfuturist Manifesto . Okay, by now I'm downright certain that this is one of those links I'd recommend over lunch and you'd nod at me politely, so as not to make me feel like a laggard. So thanks for that." (Alistair for Hugh).
The Value Every Business Needs to Create Now - Harvard Business Review . " Umair Haque is one of the best writers I've come across recently on creating new kinds of value. In this piece for the Harvard Business Review , he distinguishes between thick and thin value - thin value is a zero-sum game, while thick value adds something sustainable and meaningful. The piece is full of links worth checking out, and there's a good video with more detail on the concept." (Alistair for Mitch).
Fractals - The Color of Infinity . " Benoit Mandelbrot , the father of fractal geometry , died this past week. Here is Arthur C. Clark 's documentary about fractals, and the Mandelbrot set , some of the most thrilling and significant mathematics of the past century." (Hugh for Alistair).
Bloomberg Game Changers: Steve Jobs . " Bloomberg TV 's documentary on Steve Jobs ." (Hugh for Mitch).
Twitter Mood Predicts The Stock Market - Technology Review . "Can Twitter predict the future? What if Twitter could not predict the future, but it could predict what will happen in the stock market... up to six days in advance. This doesn't come as a shock/surprise to me. With all of this sentiment and input being put into 140 characters (or less) by millions and millions of people, the raw data is crunchable enough to pull trends and observations out of it. Take a read... and look into the future of data and trending." (Mitch for Alistair).
ABI: Five Billion Mobile Users Worldwide - MediaPost . "We are all very impressed with the fact that there are over two billion people on the Internet currently (and over 500 million of them are also on Facebook ). If that stat drops your jaw, check this one out: 'a new study by ABI Research today confirms that mobile subscriptions worldwide passed the 5 billion mark in the second quarter.' Do you think that number is going to go up or down in the next little while? When we talk about Web and Mobile strategies, maybe we should really just be concentrating on mobile... and nothing else. It might sound dramatic, but mobile is double-plus the size of the online world... and that's today." (Mitch for Hugh).
Now, it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.
Tags:
abi research
alistair croll
apple
arthur c clarke
bitcurrent
bite-sized edits
bloomberg tv
bookfuturist manifesto
complete web monitoring
documentary
facebook
fractal geometry
gigaom
great links
harvard business review
hugh mcguire
human 20
librivox
link
linkbait
managing bandwidth
mandlebrot set
mathematics
matthew ingram
media hacks
mediapost
mobile
rednod
snarkmarket
steve jobs
stock market
technology review
the book oven
thick value
thin value benoit mandelbrot
tim carmody
twitter
umair hoque
October 21, 2010
Build A Better Mousetrap
You can see the future of Marketing by standing in line at the grocery store.
At least I did today. While waiting to buy some yogurt and bananas, I watched a toddler point, push, prod and try to manipulate the screen where your items are displayed to you as they're swiped across the bar code reader. While smudging the screen, the child was saying, "iPhone...iPad!" The mother - looking more than a little embarrassed - said, "she thinks it's her Dad's iPad... kids today."
Kids today. Adults tomorrow.
They're not going to use a mouse. They're probably not going to use a keyboard the way we use one. They're probably going to have minimal text-based like communication (the way we have). I used to laugh at the line that a young person thinks that a screen without a mouse is broken. Imagine, we're at that exact moment in time when a young person who can't interact with a screen by touching it will assume that the screen is broken.
This is a big, big deal.
For the most part, we humans have a hard time seeing the big changes and how this affects the rest of humanity going forward. While I won't point to a specific device (iPhone or iPad), it's safe to say that this will become the standard going forward. Look no further than how Apple is positioning the trackpad on the new MacBook Air. They're talking about it as if it's like touching a screen instead of comparing it to a mouse.
These are big, big changes. Can you feel them? A two-year-old can.
Tags:
apple
ipad
iphone
keyboard
macbook air
marketing
mouse
screen
trackpad
Search Box
Think about this: are search engines changing or are search engines changing because how we search is changing?
If there's one thing I have learned in my many years as a professional marketer, it is this: once doctors and big pharma start doing things, you are on the brink of a Tipping Point (to steal a Malcolm Gladwell phrase). It's nothing negative (at all) or even a slight against them. Doctors are traditionally slower to adopt to technology (though some of them are at the bleeding edge, so yes, this is a generalization) and big pharma usually takes time to adopt new marketing platforms because of regulations and compliance (again, not a slight against the industry and yes, there are some companies that are more progressive than the lot).
Big pharma and doctors have been embracing Social Media more and more and their online habits are changing.
Just take a look at the healthcare professional marketing space, and you'll see the changes taking place. But, it's not just doctors and pharma that can help us see change when it comes to the Internet. Pew Internet released a study titled, Mobile Health 2010, recently which revealed a very interesting kernel of information: 17% of total cell phone users used their mobile device to look up health information.
That's small. That's a big deal.
While 17% may seem like a small number, just look at the trending and how fast that is going to scale. The basic pretense is also important: more and more people are using their mobile device as their primary connection to the Internet and information via search. Along with that, more and more people are doing this in real-time (as needed) versus trying to remember what it was they were looking for when they are in front of their laptop of desktop computers.
One-line of connectivity.
Companies tend to have an online strategy and a mobile strategy. I believe this to be a critical marketing flaw. Brands need a digital marketing strategy that looks at one-line of connectivity. Consumers are simply connected now. They're starting to care less and less about what they're using to connect (a mobile, a tablet, an e-reader, a laptop, etc...) and they're simply expecting to have a similar experience whether it's a two-inch screen or thirty-two inch screen. When someone recommends something to someone else, they no longer wait to get home and do an online search to check it out, they're whipping out their mobiles and making those searches happen in real-time and out in the wild.
This trend is not going away.
Digital Marketing as we know it today is going to look very different in twelve-months from now. Tablets will continue to flood the market and blur the lines between mobile devices and computers. The mobile wars between Apple, Google (Android), RIM (BlackBerry) and others will continue to intensify, and connectivity (wireless, 3G and beyond) will not only become ubiquitous... it's going to become seamless. Right now, people still struggle to find zones of connectivity. We're going to have connections everywhere (and very fast) in short order. Think about online access as prevalent as radio airwaves or electricity (and, hopefully, with a cheaper cost of access associated to it). The lesson here is not to be disenfranchised with a small number like 17%, but take it with a "glass is half full" attitude so you can better predict where this is going.
Doctors everywhere are making digital house calls. Is your Marketing doing the same?
Tags:
android
apple
blackberry
cell phone
connectivity
digital marketing strategy
google
healthcare marketing
malcolm gladwell
marketing
marketing trend
mobile device
mobile health 2010
mobile strategy
new marketing
online access
online habits
online strategy
pew internet
pharma marketing
professional marketer
rim
search box
search engine
social media
tablet
tipping point
October 20, 2010
Looking Beyond The Banner Ad
Banner advertising never had a chance.
And that's not a cynic of advertising talking, but rather someone who spent the bulk of the early Internet days selling banner advertising and cutting deals. Even during the heyday (before the dot com implosion), the cracks in the pavement were evident. Beyond the standard fare (technological limitations, issues with enforcing standards and so on), my major gripe was that the Internet is a different kind of media channel and platform, and plastering different sizes of boxes all over the content does not create a cohesive customer-centric product. It's not like a magazine where a page of advertising between reading doesn't really disrupt the flow, but rather ads some visual candy to the words. It's not like television where the commercials are used as breaks or ways to build a plot. Online, it tends be just a mess that usually makes the content harder to read and annoys the reader.
It's also more than one message.
Just head over to your favorite newspaper online. It's usually a mess of messages - ads, links, small boxes, big boxes, takeovers, etc... There no choice of differentiation for the consumer between reading content and then seeing an ad... it all takes place in one annoying blast. Trying to read text on a page that has things blinking all over the place and at different times/places murders the user experience. Beyond that, in a bid to prove that there are revenues in online advertising publishers do crazy things like stagger one piece of content over multiple pages simply to serve more banner ads and up their impression/revenue potential.
Things have to change. Things are about to change.
Google recently announced an initiative called, Watch This Space, which is looking to re-invent the banner ad (focusing on targeting, creativity and simpler technology to make it work), while Microsoft is also looking to change things up. In a MediaWeek news item published on October 18th, 2010 called, Microsoft's Everson Looks to Reinvent Display, the company's CVP of Global Ad Sales, Carolyn Everson, basically said, "banner ads stink."
According to MediaWeek...
"Microsoft is planning to set up a series of meetings with top creative agencies and executives across the industry as part of an Everson-led effort to reinvigorate online creative, and to attract more traditional brands in the process. Everson, who was most recently COO and EVP of U.S. Ad Sales at MTV Networks , wants to sit down with the current generation of Don Draper 's and spark nothing short of a revolution."
What do you think? Are banner ads are on their last leg? Can that form of advertising work if it is re-invented?
Tags:
ad standards
ad targeting
advertising
banner advertising
carolyn everson
content
creative agency
digital marketing
display advertising
don draper
google
magazine
marketing
media
mediaweek
microsoft
mtv networks
newspaper
online advertising
online creative
online publisher
publishing
television
watch this space
October 19, 2010
Setec Astronomy
The chance of anybody who has not seen the 1992 movie, Sneakers, and caught the obscure reference to continue reading this Blog post beyond the title will be minimal... and I'm fine with that.
"Setec Astronomy" is actually an anagram in the thriller for "too many secrets." We now live in a world with very few secrets. The truth is that people making claims about their competencies and skills and not being able to back them up with a digital footprint comes off as hollow. But, it's worse than that, because claiming yourself as an expert and knowing that others can do a few, simple online searches to uncover the truth makes it even worse.
Who do you trust?
Someone recently asked me about a Social Media course that was taking place and if I knew the instructor. I did not. Like the person asking the question, I went online and discovered that the individual leading this intensive session has no credible digital footprint. While they have a respectable job title, their LinkedIn profile was out of date. They have a handful of Twitter followers, but have not updated their status in the past six months and most of the tweets prior to that are repetitive Foursquare check-ins to their work, gym and a local bar (digging a little deeper it's clear that they were trying out Foursquare but dropped it in short order as well). They have no Blog, Podcast, YouTube clips or flickr stream. It's hard to even find places online where they have commented on other people's Blogs. They do have a Facebook profile, but the last update was a few weeks ago, and it was a link to a project they were working on.
I wouldn't pay to take a course with them.
There have been many Blog posts and debates about the notion of "walking the talk" when it comes to Social Media. A thought like, "do you need thousands of followers on Twitter to speak to the business benefits of being on Twitter?" The answer is "no," you do not need thousands of followers, but you do need to show up, be active and be engaged with the channels to really know what they are, how they work and - most importantly - how to teach them to others.
We're doing the Marketing industry a disservice.
The amazing thing (and the scary thing) about Social Media is that it's evident (through those simple searches) if someone understands the channels and how they work. The amazing thing (and the scary thing) about Social Media is that it's not a numbers game - you can get a general gist of someone's competencies by their level and quality of activity. The amazing thing (and the scary thing) about Social Media is that you can't fake it. In the old days, you could say, "I've spent a decade in the Marketing industry," and it was a tough claim to disprove. That was the world of "too many secrets." Now, can you really claim to teach a course on how to successfully leverage these channels when it's clear that you have failed to engage in almost all of them? The default excuse may be that you don't have time for them, yourself, because you're too busy successfully doing it for clients... but I don't buy it. Social Media is highly personal and it's hard (very hard) to do it well and, if you're not neck deep in it, yourself, it's even harder to be successful doing it for others.
Do you think professionals need to be able to "walk the talk"? What's your take?
Tags:
blog
digital footprint
facebook
flickr
foursquare
linkedin
marketing industry
podcast
search engine
sneakers
social media
social media course
too many secrets
twitter
youtube
October 17, 2010
Building A Referral Engine With John Jantsch
Episode #224 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.
If you are a small to medium-sized business owner (aka a SMB), then you should be following John Jantsch and his amazing system, Blog, Podcast and best-selling business book called, Duct Tape Marketing. John brings smart, easy and practical marketing tips and strategies to get small business owners to better understand Marketing and its relevance in the growth of a business. He just released his latest book, The Referral Engine, and it's great for businesses of every size (so get it, read it and do what it says). John first joined me on episode #186 of this Podcast, so it's a real pleasure to have him back. Enjoy the conversation...
You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #224.
Tags:
advertising
bite size edits
blog
blogging
blue sky factory
book oven
cast of dads
cc chapman
chris brogan
christopher s penn
david usher
digital dads
digital marketing
duct tape marketing
escape velocity
facebook
facebook group
hugh mcguire
human business works
iambik
in over your head
itunes
john jantsch
julien smith
librivox
man on the go
managing the gray
marie mai
marketing
marketing over coffee
media hacks
new marketing labs
online social network
podcast
podcasting
six pixels of separation
social media 101
social media marketing
strategy
the referral engine
third tribe marketing
trust agents
twist image
October 16, 2010
Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #17
Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?
My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Rednod, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, Bite-Sized Edits, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for each other (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".
Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:
Google's CEO: 'The Laws Are Written by Lobbyists' - The Atlantic . "You may have heard the quote, but the full interview with Eric Schmidt at the Washington Ideas Forum is worth your time (video below). When he said, 'all the laws are written by lobbyists,' he was widely criticized - indeed, Schmidt seems to have a knack for telling us simple truths we don't want to hear, often to the chagrin of his PR team. With corporations and unions more free than ever to influence political process, it's nice to see someone pointing out the obvious." (Alistair for Hugh).
Bass Guitarist Victor Wooten Gives A 'Music Lesson' - NPR . "A music lesson. In this NPR podcast, Victor Wooten (and his kids!) give us a music lesson. Much as Ray Luk 's Bitnorth explanation of the haunting On The Nature of Daylight helped me listen to it with new ears, so hearing this five-time Grammy Award winner explain and demonstrate various techniques gave me new appreciation for the bass." (Alistair for Mitch).
Rain Men: The lost language of Italian parasols and the men who made them - The Paris Review . "Just a lovely, and too short, bit of writing, history, and
linguistics, on the umbrella makers of Piedmont in Italy (from whence the first European umbrellas came), and their secret language, Tarùsc." (Hugh for Alistair).
Under Cover: Underman lookbook - HypeBeast. "In the fashion industry, a 'lookbook' is a set of photographs showing off a clothing line, photographer etc. Here is a stunning peek at the lookbook from the Spring/Summer collection from Jun Takahashi 's lablel, Under Cover. It's live-action manga as fashion shoot, or vice versa. I send this link to Mitch, because of his insistence that 'brands *are* media publishers.' In this case, we have an extreme: the clothes/fashion are expressed through the storyboard for a live action manga movie or book. What's interesting here is how closely the artistic impulse for the clothes and the photographs are intertwined - the media is of the 'brand,' the brand is of the media. Also the pics are wild." (Hugh for Mitch).
Twitter Crushing Facebook's Click-Through Rate: Report - Fast Company . "This story ripped though Twitter and Blogs like a brushfire this past week (no wonder). It turns out that you need very different online metrics and web analytics when attempting to do anything on both Twitter and Facebook (no shock there). It also turns out that Twitter generates a much higher clickthrough rate, but Facebook smashed all when it comes to people sharing content and information. This article is further proof that web analytics and how we monitor websites is going to change and morph even more. It's also further proof that Twitter and Facebook have little in common in terms of usage." (Mitch for Alistair).
The "Imbecile" and "Moron" Responds: On the Freedoms of Remix Creators - The Huffington Post . "There's nothing like rekindling the digital rights management debate by having Lawrence Lessig judge a Vimeo remix contest. OK, that wasn't what set off the folks on Twitter, it was Lessig's speech that did it (video below). We're going to have to come to some sort of resolution on this in the very near future. It simply can't wait. The old use of 'fair use' just doesn't work in this remix culture and trying to maintain publishing control by geographic region seems equally archaic. No, I don't have the answer, but Hugh is always neck-deep in this debate, so I'm sure the fodder here will get him to chime in." (Mitch for Hugh).
Now, it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.
Tags:
alistair croll
bitcurrent
bite-sized edits
bitnorth
blog
brand
complete web monitoring
digital rights management
drm
eric schmidt
facebook
fair use
fast company
gigaom
google
grammy award
great links
hugh mcguire
human 20
hypebeast
jun takahashi
lawrence lessig
librivox
link
linkbait
lookbook
managing bandwidth
manga
media
media hacks
npr
on the nature of daylight
online metric
parasol
piedmont
podcast
publishing
ray luk
rednod
remix
tarusc
the atlantic
the book oven
the huffington post
the paris review
twitter
umbrella
under cover
victor wooten
video
washington ideas forum
web analytics
October 15, 2010
The Business Of Content
Content is King. It's a saying you've heard countless times... long before Social Media empowered individuals to create and distribute their own content.
Content is the new marketing. Whether Marketers are thinking like publishers or whether brands are hiring/working with community managers to help them get results. If you can think about consumer engagement at that level, things begin to become slightly less foggy. The idea that you don't have to wrap your messages and blast them out around the original content, but instead you can create and produce the actual content and keep people engaged and connected as you see fit is - in a way - a whole new dimension to the media and marketing business.
It's something that the traditional media people are still tinkering with as well.
While attending this year's Google Zeitgeist conference this past September in Phoenix, I had the pleasure of watching Ari Emanuel (fans of the TV show, Entourage, should know that the character, Ari Gold - played by Jeremy Piven - is based on Emanuel) and Patrick Whitesell, the co-CEOs of WME Entertainment, discuss the state of the entertainment business. It's fascinating to hear from these super-agents to the stars (movie, TV, books and beyond). There is a truly amazing subtext to the conversation (which you don't really have to read too deep between the lines to uncover) in this presentation, as they discuss the value of content and the distribution channels around them... and how they are changing.
This is 27 minutes well-worth your time...
Tags:
advertising
ari emanuel
ari gold
business
business model
community manager
consumer engagement
content
entertainment business
entourage
google zeitgeist
jeremy piven
marketer
mass media
movie business
new marketing
patrick whitesell
publishing
social media
traditional media
william morris endevour
wme entertainment
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