You want to get started with Twitter? I'm going to trust you don't need me to help you sign up. If you do, well, that's just hard luck for you. First read this, then decide if you even need a Twitter account.
Sure, we'd all like to be Guy Kawasaki, who has a quarter of a million followers and the Twitter thing all worked out, but we can't. Did that burst your little Twitter bubble? Sorry.
You should also know, that Twitter will only get traffic to you as part of a structured and planned marketing strategy. It can't do it all by itself.
There are scams out there that promise to get you 10,000 followers on Twitter. Great -- how do you know they're real people? How do you know they'll add value to your brand? How do you know that being followed by one of these people won't hurt your brand?
Like any networking, you have to take some responsibility for who you associate with, and if that means growing your network a little slower, that's how it has to be. you can make hundreds of thousands of matches from a single tree. You could also have your whole forest burned down by a single careless match. Got it?
I guess the first question you're asking is "What the heck is Twitter and why do I want to have a Twitter 'presence?'
Good question. There's a pretty good chance that a Twitter presence wouldn't be very helpful to you. Depending on how you plan to use it. For most of us, a pressure washer wouldn't be very helpful. Depending on how we plan to use it. Like any tool, you have to know how to use it. You have to know that it's the right tool for the job you want it to do.
It's not a miracle cure for your marketing problems. There is no quick and easy way to get a thousand followers unless you are a celebrity of some kind, or "famous" in your market sector.
Let's work from the assumption that you're NOT Charlie Sheen or the Queen of England.
Look at it this way: first there was drunk dialing, where you'd get drunk and call a friend at 2 a.m. to let them know how drunk you were.
Annoying rating: 10/10.
Then there was drunk texting, where you'd text a few of your friends to let them know you were getting your stomach pumped at the local emergency room.
Annoying rating: 7/10.
The natural progression is drunk tweeting, where you can tweet to the entire world, at any time, how you thought that the cop car was a taxi and that is why you tried to give the officer $20.
Annoying rating: 1/10.
Now imagine that you're not drunk, but that you're making calls to sell your product or service. Sure, Twitter is a much more passive way to get information out, but you can get it out to a lot of people with not much effort.
"Yeah," I hear you say, "but how much can you really say with 140 characters?"
A lot. That's how much you get for a text message on your phone. Also, look at this sample tweet from economist and author, Umair Haque:
RT @WorldBank: Live now: Launch of new @WorldBank #education strategy - focus on #learningforall http://bit.ly/lXTyml
It's 116 characters, and here's how to break the tweet down.
RT @WorldBank - Indicates this is a retweet of an original post by the user, worldbank. Using the username @worldbank ensures that the user, worldbank, gets copied on the message. @mentions are helpful for building your follower list, I'll explain why in a moment.
Then comes the message itself:
Live now: Launch of new @WorldBank #education strategy - focus on #learningforall
#education and #learningforall are what tweeters call hashtags. A hashtag is simply a label that is searchable. For instance, if you search for #education, you'll get a list of the tweets that use the hashtag #education. Hashtags are incredibly important in helping you establish yourself as a credible expert in a field.
Then there's the shortened link: http://bit.ly/lXTyml (20 characters)
This actually points to the URL:
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTEDUCATION/0,,contentMDK:22896219~menuPK:282428~pagePK:64020865~piPK:51164185~theSitePK:282386,00.html?cid=EXT_TWBN_D_EXT (171 characters)
You simply can't fit that URL in your 140 characters. Link shorteners make Twitter possible. More on link shorteners in a moment, too.
Twitter is the billboard you use to get people into your store. It's not your store. And sure, you're only advertising to other people who use Twitter. But the guy outside your store twirling that sign is only advertising to the people driving past your store.
Now you know what Twitter is, here are some rules for you to think about:
1. Don't follow everyone. The number of people you're following should be LOWER than the number of tweets you've put out. You also shouldn't follow more than about twice as many people as are following you.
2. Spread your tweets out through the day. If you have regular marketing messages, use something like Hootsuite to schedule them. Sending all your tweets in a five minute spell just gets you lost in the tweet streams of your followers. Or worse, your followers think you're spamming them.
3. Hashtag EVERY message. Using hashtags will get your tweets out in front of more than just your followers, and will generate more followers if your content is compelling. If you tweet good quality content out about a specific subject, and you do it with consistency and regularity, you'll fast become an expert around that subject's hastag. And experts find themselves getting retweeted often.
4. Don't follow users who don't tweet regularly. Don't follow people who only tweet self-serving marketing. The well-known rule of thumb is that for every self-serving tweet you put out, you should be putting out four informative tweets. Start by following a couple of magazines in your sector, and a couple of well known or interesting users. To begin with, only follow users who participate and who tweet regularly. Avoid users who have very few tweets, or are following a disproportionately high number of users compared to how many followers they have. Don't follow Guy Kawasaki expecting that he'll tweet your content. He won't (most likely.) Follow users who you think might retweet you.
5. Retweet. This gets you on the rader of users you follow. Eventually, if you're putting out original tweets, and not just retweeting the thoughts of other users, they're likely to follow your tweets and retweet them. Making sure specific users get to see your tweets by giving them an @mention is a good way to let them know you exist. Just make sure what you're giving them is something that they might be interested in, and not just spam.
6. Link shorteners. There are dozens of them. Use one. Your 140 characters are precious, don't waste them. Link shorteners also make it easy to track your clicks. For most of them, paste the link into the address bar and add + to the end to get click statistics. For example, http://goo.gl/xJRNL is the link, http://goo.gl/xJRNL+ is the statistics for the link. Really, it couldn't be easier.
7. Get listed in the right lists. It's just as important as getting specific followers. Use hashtags to become an expert in a subject -- users following that hashtag will add you to their list of experts, and are more likely to retweet and share your updates. There really isn't an easy way to get listed, other than by posting links to great content and being retweeted. It's about reputation.
8. Analytics. Know which of your tweets get the most clicks. See what content resonates with your followers. Also, go to klout.com and register. It's free, but it gives good metrics about how your network is interacting with you and the world, and vice versa.
9. It's okay to grow slowly. Don't stress out about getting hundreds or thousands of followers immediately. Certainly don't follow hundreds of people right away. Remember that it's an information exchange community -- if you're consuming more than you're putting in, you'll find it hard to get followers.
10. Know what to tweet. In a sample of 10 tweets, you probably want a breakdown that looks something like:
1 - Public reply @usertweet
2 - Marketing tweets
3 - Retweets
4 - Original thoughts/links to interesting content
And really, that's about all you need to know about Twitter to get started using it effectively. I know, it's a lot to take in, but if you don't have your expectations set too high you'll find that it's a useful tool for getting traffic to your site.
Ultimately the name of the game, as with your site, is compelling and unique content. Anyone can retweet, but exciting news is going to get clicks, and clicks translate into traffic. And that's where your sales team begins.
Friday, April 29, 2011
My Words, You Can't Have Them (Unless You Ask.)
I had the strangest experience -- maybe not experience, but feeling -- today.
Last night I was looking around the Internet to see where my writing had been republished, since I'm never sure how far out these words get. And on three sites, one of my articles was accredited to another author. The other author used about 1200 words of one of my articles and then tacked on about another 100-200 words of their own.
Nowhere in the article was there a reference to the fact that most of the piece was written by someone else, but the guy who copied the article actually thanks his readers and assured them that there would be more coming soon. I sent the "author" a message to either pull the article or give correct accreditation, which is just courtesy. I haven't heard back.
I suppose I'd better get writing faster.
I've never been plagiarized, and it took someone congratulating me today, and pointing out that that's what had happened, for me to realize it.
Surprisingly I'm not cool with it. I worked really hard on this particular piece, finding subjects and interviewing them. It was good enough quality that the LA Times quoted me, and Time Magazine Online did a phone interview with me. I was, and am, proud of that work. That someone who didn't put the time or effort in would use it and take credit for it is actually offensive to me.
I guess I must be a writer after all.
Last night I was looking around the Internet to see where my writing had been republished, since I'm never sure how far out these words get. And on three sites, one of my articles was accredited to another author. The other author used about 1200 words of one of my articles and then tacked on about another 100-200 words of their own.
Nowhere in the article was there a reference to the fact that most of the piece was written by someone else, but the guy who copied the article actually thanks his readers and assured them that there would be more coming soon. I sent the "author" a message to either pull the article or give correct accreditation, which is just courtesy. I haven't heard back.
I suppose I'd better get writing faster.
I've never been plagiarized, and it took someone congratulating me today, and pointing out that that's what had happened, for me to realize it.
Surprisingly I'm not cool with it. I worked really hard on this particular piece, finding subjects and interviewing them. It was good enough quality that the LA Times quoted me, and Time Magazine Online did a phone interview with me. I was, and am, proud of that work. That someone who didn't put the time or effort in would use it and take credit for it is actually offensive to me.
I guess I must be a writer after all.
Labels:
intellectual property,
IP Theft,
plagiarism,
writing
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Natural Born Citizen
It's unambiguous in the Constitution:
No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
So...what exactly is a natural born citizen? Does it mean that children born by C-section aren't eligible to run for President? No. That's silly. But curiously, there hasn't been a true legal definition of "natural born citizen" since the Constitution was written, so most courts apply the common law of the time. And when the Constitution was written, common law regarding citizenship was the same as common law of England.
In 1898, United States v Wong Kim Ark, the court ruled that:
It thus clearly appears that by the law of England for the last three centuries, beginning before the settlement of this country, and continuing to the present day, aliens, while residing in the dominions possessed by the crown of England, were within the allegiance, the obedience, the faith or loyalty, the protection, the power, and the jurisdiction of the English sovereign; and therefore every child born in England of alien parents was a natural-born subject, unless the child of an ambassador or other diplomatic agent of a foreign state, or of an alien enemy in hostile occupation of the place where the child was born. The same rule was in force in all the English colonies upon this continent down to the time of the Declaration of Independence, and in the United States afterwards, and continued to prevail under the constitution as originally established.
Long story made short, the common law of the United States is that if you are born on US soil, and your parents are not enemy combatants fighting against the US, or part of a hostile occupying force, or diplomats working in the US, or born on an Indian reservation (I'm not kidding), the child is a citizen. And being a citizen is entitled to every protection the law allows.
Oh, and it also allows children, born in the US, to foreign-born parents, to run for president.
So. Case closed. Which is what the Indiana Court of Appeals cited when it dismissed a case challenging Obama's citizenship in 2009.
There's a post script to this, for all the birthers out there saying that natural born citizens have to be born to people who are citizens already. A great many Irish, Jewish, German, Polish, Italian, and Scottish immigrants were not citizens when they had their kids. That would make those children not citizens. And their children, being born to non citizens, also could not be citizens. Chances are, by the average birther's definition, there are hundreds of thousands of non-citizens running around, even voting...
And oh, how I wish that would be the end of it.
Labels:
birth certificate,
birther,
constitution,
law,
obama
Birther Madness
Donald Trump, celebrity punchline and possible GOP presidential candidate, finally got his way today when President Barack Obama presented his birth certificate for public scrutiny, in the hope that it would put away forever, the nonsense of his birthplace.
And now we get the questions:
* Why is there no official original registrar seal?
* Obama's father listed as born in "KENYA" when it was known as British East Africa until 1963.
How could Obama Sr. have been recorded as a citizen of a country that didn't exist at that time?
* The hospital didn't get that name until 1978
I didn't say they were sensible questions.
But here are the answers:
There's no registrar seal visible on this picture, but there are other pictures where you can see it. And it has the official stamp of the Hawaiian Department of Health to show it's an official copy.
The Kenyan African National Union (KANU) and the Kenyan African Democratic Union (KADU) were formed in 1960. Barack Obama Sr. was listed as a STUDENT, on a scolarship he earned from Thomas Mboya, a key figure in the founding of KANU. So if you put two and two together, it's likely that the young Obama Sr. was also interested in the founding of an independent Kenya.
The Founding Fathers considered themselves Americans first, Colonial Britons second. Likely that people pushing for a free Kenya considered themselves Kenyan first, anything else second. And really, if Obama Sr. had said he was Bangolian, do you honestly think that the Hawaiian records clerk would have questioned that?
The point of that story? Hospitals change their names, it's a fact. The Web site that contends that Obama's birth hospital didn't exist with that name until 1978 might be right, but it doesn't mean that it wasn't known that way by locals.
It's amusing to me that Kenya is probably a derivative of the Kimba word, Kinyaa. It means Ostrich.
It is about time this silliness on the origin of the president is ended once and for all, but as a few of my blog-friends have said, when people are looking for conspiracies, they'll find them, no matter what the facts say.
And while we're on the production of documents, let's mull this over:
Donald Trump's divorce settlement is, for the most part, sealed by the courts. Why?
What we do know is that he is required to pay her $350,000 each year in alimony. The annual salary for the president of the USA is $400,000. I'm not sure that The Donald can make it on $50,000 a year.
Not without getting income from other sources, which raises immediate conflict of interest questions, or by having an official second job. So yeah, a part-time president.
That said, he may still log more hours in D.C. than W did.
And now we get the questions:
* Why is there no official original registrar seal?
* Obama's father listed as born in "KENYA" when it was known as British East Africa until 1963.
How could Obama Sr. have been recorded as a citizen of a country that didn't exist at that time?
* The hospital didn't get that name until 1978
I didn't say they were sensible questions.
But here are the answers:
There's no registrar seal visible on this picture, but there are other pictures where you can see it. And it has the official stamp of the Hawaiian Department of Health to show it's an official copy.
The Kenyan African National Union (KANU) and the Kenyan African Democratic Union (KADU) were formed in 1960. Barack Obama Sr. was listed as a STUDENT, on a scolarship he earned from Thomas Mboya, a key figure in the founding of KANU. So if you put two and two together, it's likely that the young Obama Sr. was also interested in the founding of an independent Kenya.
The Founding Fathers considered themselves Americans first, Colonial Britons second. Likely that people pushing for a free Kenya considered themselves Kenyan first, anything else second. And really, if Obama Sr. had said he was Bangolian, do you honestly think that the Hawaiian records clerk would have questioned that?
I have a friend in Alabama (yes, Alabama), and there's a local road that doesn't go by this name on any GPS you can buy, but a lot of locals still call it "Nigger Head Road" because it's where, in the pre-Civil Rights era, executed black men and women would have their decapitated head mounted on a stick. The people who call it that aren't racist, it's just what they grew up knowing to call it.
The point of that story? Hospitals change their names, it's a fact. The Web site that contends that Obama's birth hospital didn't exist with that name until 1978 might be right, but it doesn't mean that it wasn't known that way by locals.
It's amusing to me that Kenya is probably a derivative of the Kimba word, Kinyaa. It means Ostrich.
It is about time this silliness on the origin of the president is ended once and for all, but as a few of my blog-friends have said, when people are looking for conspiracies, they'll find them, no matter what the facts say.
And while we're on the production of documents, let's mull this over:
Donald Trump's divorce settlement is, for the most part, sealed by the courts. Why?
What we do know is that he is required to pay her $350,000 each year in alimony. The annual salary for the president of the USA is $400,000. I'm not sure that The Donald can make it on $50,000 a year.
Not without getting income from other sources, which raises immediate conflict of interest questions, or by having an official second job. So yeah, a part-time president.
That said, he may still log more hours in D.C. than W did.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Do We Expect Too Much for Free?
Written for Young Entrepreneur.
When the New York Times began its new subscription service, and limited the number of articles a subscriber could access each day, the comments on the stories went crazy. Okay, crazier than comments usually are.
"And so, the countdown clock to the demise of the New York Times begins ticking in earnest..."
"The NYT is definitely shooting itself in the foot."
"The "interweb" was meant for free transfer of info....just because big Corp's trying to suck the big egg dry, doesn't make it right."
"No one's going to do this. They'll just read a different newspaper and the Times will die (again, like last time they tried this)"
I know, it's shocking. A newspaper, of which precious few remain, wants to make enough money to continue to deliver world-famous reporting. What was it thinking?
But the outrage was just another example of how accustomed we've become to our favorite price tag: Free.
The Internet, no matter how much we'd like to believe otherwise, is not free. At least, not free of charge. And yet, we expect our favorite sites do deliver quality content, and sometimes their products, for free.
We expect free shipping, free returns, free of taxes. And oh, we expect it to be cheaper than in a retail store because, after all, Internet stores have no physical storefront to maintain and manage. No overheads for that should translate into cheaper prices, right?
Is the obsession with free a condition of the Entitled Generation? Have we come so far in the new millennium that just because some things are available for free, that all things should be available for free? Don't misunderstand me, I jumped into Napster with both feet, but now I have an iTunes account because, frankly, if I like the artist, I want them to get paid.
For the New York Times, the quality of news reporting will remain internationally respected if the gray lady can pay to attract the best talent. That costs money, and the money has to come from somewhere.
To flip the coin, though, if corporations expect us to be honest citizens (and pay for consuming their services), then there should be some reciprocity in how honest they are with pricing. We all know of services that add on charges until the final price looks nothing like the price you started with.
Ticketmaster, for example, which recently boosted the price of a pair of concert tickets I bought by 20 percent, when they added a convenience fee and printing charges. Forget the fact that the box office at the venue, which is a ten minute drive from my house, told me that the only way to buy tickets was through Ticketmaster, most people seem to be puzzled as to where all the fees go, especially since none of those charges seem to go to the artist putting on the show.
Similarly, try taking two suitcases to any airport. You're looking at $25-$35 per checked bag in additional charges. Each way. Payment is due when you check the bags, or for some airlines up to 24 hours before your scheduled departure time. Ignoring the inconvenience that this additional after-the-fact charge causes travelers, if you know you'll be checking a bag, doesn't it make more sense to be able to have that included in the cost of the ticket?
But, to be fair, in the decade since 9/11, the average cost of an airline ticket hasn't increased very much, even when you include the price of checking your bags.
So to ask the question again: do we expect too much for free?
I can't help but think that the answer is "yes," especially when the product is digital. With the exception of very few things, we expect to be able to have access to the downloadable fruits of someone else's labor and not have to pay for it.
If you want to point at the person responsible for the economic disaster of the last few years, you're going to need a mirror. The less we're prepared to pay into the systems that provide us with value, the less value we'll be able to derive from them. It's not Nobel-level economics, it’s just about realigning ourselves with the centuries-long truths of how trade works.
On a final note, there is a growing trend for restaurants which ask their patrons to pay what they think their food was worth. It seems counter-intuitive, but these restaurants report greater profit margins than many of their fixed-price competitors. These are more than mere publicity stunts, they show a growing awareness from businesses that a lot of consumers are prepared to pay, but only when the product is worth paying for.
When the New York Times began its new subscription service, and limited the number of articles a subscriber could access each day, the comments on the stories went crazy. Okay, crazier than comments usually are.
"And so, the countdown clock to the demise of the New York Times begins ticking in earnest..."
"The NYT is definitely shooting itself in the foot."
"The "interweb" was meant for free transfer of info....just because big Corp's trying to suck the big egg dry, doesn't make it right."
"No one's going to do this. They'll just read a different newspaper and the Times will die (again, like last time they tried this)"
I know, it's shocking. A newspaper, of which precious few remain, wants to make enough money to continue to deliver world-famous reporting. What was it thinking?
But the outrage was just another example of how accustomed we've become to our favorite price tag: Free.
The Internet, no matter how much we'd like to believe otherwise, is not free. At least, not free of charge. And yet, we expect our favorite sites do deliver quality content, and sometimes their products, for free.
We expect free shipping, free returns, free of taxes. And oh, we expect it to be cheaper than in a retail store because, after all, Internet stores have no physical storefront to maintain and manage. No overheads for that should translate into cheaper prices, right?
Is the obsession with free a condition of the Entitled Generation? Have we come so far in the new millennium that just because some things are available for free, that all things should be available for free? Don't misunderstand me, I jumped into Napster with both feet, but now I have an iTunes account because, frankly, if I like the artist, I want them to get paid.
For the New York Times, the quality of news reporting will remain internationally respected if the gray lady can pay to attract the best talent. That costs money, and the money has to come from somewhere.
To flip the coin, though, if corporations expect us to be honest citizens (and pay for consuming their services), then there should be some reciprocity in how honest they are with pricing. We all know of services that add on charges until the final price looks nothing like the price you started with.
Ticketmaster, for example, which recently boosted the price of a pair of concert tickets I bought by 20 percent, when they added a convenience fee and printing charges. Forget the fact that the box office at the venue, which is a ten minute drive from my house, told me that the only way to buy tickets was through Ticketmaster, most people seem to be puzzled as to where all the fees go, especially since none of those charges seem to go to the artist putting on the show.
Similarly, try taking two suitcases to any airport. You're looking at $25-$35 per checked bag in additional charges. Each way. Payment is due when you check the bags, or for some airlines up to 24 hours before your scheduled departure time. Ignoring the inconvenience that this additional after-the-fact charge causes travelers, if you know you'll be checking a bag, doesn't it make more sense to be able to have that included in the cost of the ticket?
But, to be fair, in the decade since 9/11, the average cost of an airline ticket hasn't increased very much, even when you include the price of checking your bags.
So to ask the question again: do we expect too much for free?
I can't help but think that the answer is "yes," especially when the product is digital. With the exception of very few things, we expect to be able to have access to the downloadable fruits of someone else's labor and not have to pay for it.
If you want to point at the person responsible for the economic disaster of the last few years, you're going to need a mirror. The less we're prepared to pay into the systems that provide us with value, the less value we'll be able to derive from them. It's not Nobel-level economics, it’s just about realigning ourselves with the centuries-long truths of how trade works.
On a final note, there is a growing trend for restaurants which ask their patrons to pay what they think their food was worth. It seems counter-intuitive, but these restaurants report greater profit margins than many of their fixed-price competitors. These are more than mere publicity stunts, they show a growing awareness from businesses that a lot of consumers are prepared to pay, but only when the product is worth paying for.
Labels:
airline,
consumerism,
digital,
napster,
ticketmaster
Alexa Update
Woohoo!
Officially ranked at 499,763 in the US by Alexa; 3,873,607 in the world.
This is surprising, and now I feel like it's a challenge to get ranked higher.
I wonder where this site will rank in six months, or a year. Only one way to find out, I guess.
Update: 4/19 -- 611,707
Update: 4/25 -- 499,763
Update: 4/26 -- 400,091
Update: 4/27 -- 364,395
Update: 4/28 -- 334,737
Officially ranked at 499,763 in the US by Alexa; 3,873,607 in the world.
This is surprising, and now I feel like it's a challenge to get ranked higher.
I wonder where this site will rank in six months, or a year. Only one way to find out, I guess.
Update: 4/19 -- 611,707
Update: 4/25 -- 499,763
Update: 4/26 -- 400,091
Update: 4/27 -- 364,395
Update: 4/28 -- 334,737
Labels:
alexa rank
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Brain Itch - Oil Scarcity
So what if some other commodity was in as short supply as oil?
How scarce would it have to be, how expensive would it need to get, before you changed your behavior? What would that change in behavior look like? Would you become an activist to conserve the commodity and use it sparingly? Or would you deplete it to nothing and go without? Or find a replacement? And if so, what would the replacement be?
What if coffee was as scarce as oil?
How about beef, or corn? Lithium (that makes batteries), or cotton?
Oil is used in a great many things, including plastics, so how expensive does oil need to get before we start seriously changing how we live so we can live without it?
How scarce would it have to be, how expensive would it need to get, before you changed your behavior? What would that change in behavior look like? Would you become an activist to conserve the commodity and use it sparingly? Or would you deplete it to nothing and go without? Or find a replacement? And if so, what would the replacement be?
What if coffee was as scarce as oil?
How about beef, or corn? Lithium (that makes batteries), or cotton?
Oil is used in a great many things, including plastics, so how expensive does oil need to get before we start seriously changing how we live so we can live without it?
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Why Technology is About to Ruin Your Business
A lot of businesses failed in the Great Depression, heck, even internationally known newspapers and magazines fell by the wayside. But not all of them failed because of the economic climate. Some of them failed because they didn't embrace the technological climate.
Think about how your customers consume the thing that you do or make. Is there technology, no matter how space age, that could make people less willing (or unwilling) to pay for what you do? Think about DVDs, music compact disks, newspapers, books ... these are all being replaced by digital equivalents. Now think of all the stores that sold these physical items, stores that have shuttered their doors in the last decade. What makes your business immune from obsolescence?
Consider what the United States of Facebook means for, say, a wedding photographer. When every guest can take pictures, upload and tag them instantly, wedding albums have been, to some degree, crowdsourced. Professional photographer not necessary. And who keeps paper photographs anymore, anyway?
Apple have shipped around 300 million iPod devices in the last five years, and many happy couples are avoiding the possibility of hearing the Chicken Dance, or the song that was special to the groom and his ex, in favor of creating a playlist and plugging it into a PA system. DJ, band, not necessary.
In the last decade, fax machines have been all but replaced by all-in-one scanners, pagers (and in some cases, landlines) replaced by cellphones, boring company meetings replaced by conference calls and online meetings, corporate classrooms by online training and webinars.
The point is not that business practices have changed, but that technology changes everything. Even if you don't expect it to hit your industry.
How about the oil change guy on the corner? Surely he's in no danger? If you thought so, you'd be wrong. Because it's not only how your customers consume your product, it's how they consume your marketing efforts that matters. And the oil change guy on the corner is going to be put out of business by the oil change guy on the other end of the block who knows how to get followers in Twitter, can create buzz on Facebook, and has posted his deal on Groupon or LivingSocial.
As recently as fifteen years ago, the primary methods of advertising were print, tv, and billboards. Now the best way to get in front of your market is a strong Twitter presence, and daily activity in Facebook. It's the next step in corporate personhood -- your business needs to have a personality that consumers can "like" on Facebook.
Bad reviews of your business aren't shared among a handful of people anymore -- there are whole Web sites devoted to sharing knee-jerk opinions of your company with hundreds of thousands of visitors each month. And let's not kid ourselves, here: people are far more likely to post a negative review than a positive one, and much more likely to give your business an anonymous beatdown online than call you up with constructive feedback.
Companies who can move with the technological times are far better placed to respond to the bad review on Yelp.com, or send a direct message to the Twitter user who is complaining about the experience they're having right now.
Back in 1995, Newsweek published an article about why cyberspace isn't, and never will be, nirvana. Many of the predictions for how we'll use the Internet, which the author claims as hype, (online shopping, ebooks, restaurant reservations) have come true. So think really hard about how technology might make your business obsolete. And then set to thinking about the answers to these two questions. How do you:
1. stay ahead of developments that will make your product or service obsolete.
2. stay ahead of how to market what you do, to consumers who will become evangelists for your company.
And start thinking about them now, because your competitors are already working on answers.
Labels:
branding,
obsolete,
social media,
technology
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