Lists are not enough

If I were to walk through the front door of your business, right here, right now, what would happen? Would you stick a brochure in my hand, take my phone number and then kick me out?

No. Of course not. You wouldn't be in business long if that's how you treated people. So why is your website doing that?

If your business' web strategy is focused solely on building lists of customers, you are missing the real opportunity the web offers: communication. Your website is the world's window into your business. Isn't it time you opened that window and talked to us? Isn't it time you listened to us?

Distributed Blogging

Some interesting ideas were stirred up at a Bogging Journalism & Credibility Conference. Over on PressThink, Jay Rosen has an interesting round up of attendee's thoughts

What caught my eye was Robert Cox's notion of 'distributed blogging'. As he describes it:

bringing together, say 1,000 bloggers - trained and organized - to analyze a complex government document like the Federal Budget and produce a detailed analysis of the report within a matter of hours and then disseminate that information to tens of millions via a network of blogs. If you think CBS News did not like the treatment they got by bloggers, imagine how Congress will feel when they realize every bit of pork they to slip into the federal budget is going to be broadcast worldwide by an army of bloggers. Now multiply that for state and local budgets, government departments and so on.

The internet is a powerful tool for collecting and searching distributed knowledge and we've only skimmed the surface of its capabilities. One thing's for sure: the times, they are a changing.

Comics as Communication

As a comic artist, I know how powerful a communications tool comics can be. Sadly, the medium has been largely ghettoized to the role of pulp-fantasy. Few corporate communicators and marketing professionals know the potential comics have for delivering their message. Every once in a while, though, I run across a great example of comics as communication.

Take this 1989 brochure from Apple, 'Who Needs a Computer Anyway? A Students Guide', with comics by Matt Groening. By integrating comics into what is otherwise a fairly standard marketing brochure, Apple creates a work that has longevity. They create a marketing piece that is remarkable, and as such creates its own buzz.

Most brochures have a fairly straight distribution path. They travel from the printer to the sales staff to the potential consumer to the trash bin. Brochures are quickly skimmed and then disposed of. But because of the comics, this brochure was kept and saved by many a student. In fact, there's no doubt that it's still sitting on a hundreds of bookshelves across America, sixteen years later.

What's more, unlike other marketing materials, this one was probably passed from student to student to teacher to student to parent. Each passing it on so the other could get a laugh at the cartoons. Each being introduced to the Apple brand as a result. What fabulous return on investment when you can get your potential consumers to seek out and show your marketing materials to other potential consumers.

Giving an Effective Presentation

Rule #38 – Shut down everything but the presentation software.
It's not the most embarrassing thing that can happen to you during a presentation, but suddenly having your instant message program pop up with a note from a friend is certainly in the top ten. And having your gaffe end up online, to be commented on by random folk with blogs (...like me...) is probably enough to push it into the top five embarrassing presentation moments.

My recommendation to anyone giving a presentation is to always ensure that all unnecessary background programs are shut down. If you don't need the 'net for your presentation, disconnect. Remember - whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. Shutting all the extraneous programs limits what can go wrong to just your presentation software, which is more than enough to worry about.

Edumacation

The new Apprentice has started, which pits a team of College and University Graduates against a team whose highest formal education was high school. American media has always had an anti-intellectual slant to it, so it's not surprising that the way this is played is 'educated vs uneducated'.

The truth is, there's many different types of education, and in the case of the players on the show - those that didn't go to High School opted for an education in the School of Hard Knocks. These are motivated, intelligent people with a strong independant streak. While they didn't attend classes every day, I'm sure they were putting themselves up for a mental challenge day in and day out. The school of hard knocks gives you something that you don't quite get elsewhere - real life experience. This isn't some intern position where you're given make-work or shunted aside when the big decisions come down. When in the school of hard knocks you're playing for keeps. The smarter ones of the high school crowd have likely been coupling their real life education with their own self-determined study path. Experience and knowledge lead to something that no school can grant: wisdom.

A formal education, however, should not be sneered upon. Formal education provides a clear and direct path to the knowledge. There is no need to reinvent the wheel and paths of reasoning that are known to be dead ends are avoided. The students are guided through the knowledge and shown what needs to be retained by the end of the course. In many ways, this provides the formally educated a more complete view of the big picture.

But most importantly, formal education is something that is quantifiable. The 'street smart' person has nothing but his own word that he has the skills to do a job. The formally educated have a slip of paper that assures they are knowledgable in a certain area of expertise. Few employers can take the risk or spare the time to see if the street smart person really can do the job or is just kidding themself - hence the formal education will win out in 99 out of 100 job interviews.

The Long Memory of the Internet

The days when you could do something publicly and it could be forgotten are quickly diminishing. Time was, you could be a hell-driven rapscallion during your youth or in your private life and it wouldn't have any bearing on your professional life.

Events would have significance in the moment and only the moment. Lapses in judgment would, with time's passage, fade from the thoughts of others. All was forgotten, if not forgiven.

That's no longer the case. We have the internet.

The internet is a wonderful tool for searching and collecting distributed knowledge – but some of that knowledge is about you. What you thought was once in the past can very quickly, and surprisingly, become current.

Everything that you post online, everything posted about you online, has the potential of becoming part of the public record. Expect to see more stories of people getting sacked when their employer discovers their blog, or people's naive teenage rantings being turned against them later in their professional careers, or embarrassing photos being widely disseminated.

Case in point: this image of Bill Gates from a 1983 Teen Beat magazine was linked to from a Slashdot story earlier today. Several hundred thousand people saw this – several hundred thousand more will see it in blogs and forum postings. I wouldn't be surprised if half the employees at Microsoft don't have this image sitting in their inbox at this very moment as everyone gets a chuckle at the boss' expense.



I'm willing to wager that, given the choice, Bill would have preferred these photos not be dredged up. I'm pretty sure if he could go back and do the photo-shoot again, he'd of removed the Apple PC from his office.

Time was, you could say to yourself – 'is anyone going to remember this 10 year from now?' The answer to that now depends on whether someone blogs about it.

FireFox – Safer, Faster, Better

My computer has been free of spyware for over a month now. Not a single malicious cookie nor sneaky bit of code in the registry nor executable file hiding away in some nameless hidden folder. Nada.

While Adaware gets the credit for wiping out the few that had made their way onto my system in the past, FireFox is the daily hero that keeps them at bay.

I originally loaded up Firefox out of curiousity. I'd heard early buzz about it and decided to take a peak. This was back at version 0.8 and even that early version was more impressive than the most recent version of Explorer, or any of the other browsers I'd tried. Little by little, I found myself using FireFox more and Explorer less. Around October, I made the concious decision to switch, setting FireFox as my default browser.

I've recently swayed a few other people to make the switch. Usually about the time that we do an Adaware sweep...

"423,000 spyware found?!! That is not a small number. That is a big number! Wait - what's that. Computer Over. Virus equals very yes?"

FireFox is free to download and easy as pie to install. Do yourself a favour, and give it a try.

The Self-Righteous Indignation of the Stingy

The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I yet? Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.
- KJMatthew 19, v20 - 24

Last week, Jan Egeland, UN Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs stated, "Christmastime should remind many Western countries how rich we have become, and if actually the foreign assistance of many countries now is 0.1 or 0.2% of their gross national income, I think that is stingy, really."

The comment has fueled a flurry of op ed pieces, pundit commentary and activity on blogs and message boards. The overwhelming response being Americans loudly proclaiming "How dare you call us stingy!" and trumpeting that America is the most generous nation in the world.

A NYT article states most Americans believe that 24 percent of the budget goes towards foreign aid. The reality is, less than 1/4 of one percent of the budget is aimed towards foreign aid.

Rather than being upset that the amount given is nowhere near what was percieved, the response I saw across the blogosphere was outright denial of the facts and the odd call to boycot the Times. I tried entering a discussion on one forum I frequent and was pretty well shouted down for pointing out that some nations were not contributing as much as they could.

Right now the average per capita foreign aid contribution from Norway is $447. The average per capita contribution from Sweden is $235. The UK gives $93 per capita. Canada sits at $67 per capita and the US trails with a contribution of $52 per capita. (source)

The richest nation in the world is giving only $52 per capita in aid to those less fortunate. For a nation whose leader sees himself as chosen by God, and for whom three out of four consider themselves to be Christian, is $52 an amount that seems right?

If you want to be known as a generous nation, then you have to actually walk the walk, not just talk the talk. And right now all I see is a whole lot of camels slamming into the eyes of needles.

My take on Crossfire

While Jon Stewart is the one to have very publicly stated that the Emperor has no clothes, so far as CrossFire is concerned, it is my opinion that the Internet and the bottom line are the two factors that truly spelled an end for the show and for Tucker Carlson on CNN.

In the old days, the appearance would have come and gone. People may have chatted about it around the water cooler for a day or two, but then the story would have disappeared. It would have been a funny story that the people at CrossFire would tell at parties.

But in our broadband world, people who missed the episode were able to find copies on the various peer to peer networks. They were able to download it from sites such as iFilm. The clip just kept bobbing around out there. What's more - the execs at CNN were able to keep tabs on the distribution of that clip. They were able to take a good hard look at the numbers.

The latest Wired has an interview with the designer of BitTorrent, in which they discuss how the program was used to share the clip. According to the article, the number of people who downloaded that one episode amounts to three times the audience size of CrossFire. For every one who watched CrossFire, there were three people who were cheering on Jon's appeal for an end to the charade.

If you were the president of a network and you saw there were three people who wanted a different approach to every one who liked your current approach - what choice would you make?

Gads - I can't miss today's Daily Show

The word all over the blogosphere is that Jon Stewart has killed CNN's Crossfire.

Crossfire was the televised political equivilent of wrestling or the Jerry Springer show. You had your left wing pundit and your right wing pundit and they'd try to shout the other one down. It was a freak show where you folks tune in to boo the pundit they dispised most.

Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's daily show made an appearance last October. But instead of jumping through their hoops and plugging his book, Jon stood up and declared that the emperor is wearing no clothes. He said what we all knew, deep down. The show is a sham fight that accomplishes nothing and actually divides America through a false dichotomy. "Please," Jon pleaded, "Please stop. Stop hurting America."

Well, CNN's new president Jonathan Klein said last night, "I agree wholeheartedly with Jon Stewart's overall premise." This from the Times story where it outlines how commentator Tucker Carlson will be looking for somewhere other than CNN to ply his trade and how Crossfire, for all intents and purposes, will be axed.

Now, I've an opinion on all this... but it will have to wait. The Daily Show starts shortly and I need to whip up a batch of popcorn.

Puretracks - still sucks runny eggs

A few weeks back, I griped about the music download service, Puretracks. In that entry, I'd unsuccessfully tried to make a purchase from their site. Poor usability, horrid coding and just plain bad design was the final verdict.

I'd decided never to darken my internet cache file with their site again. But when a gift certificate ended up in my lap for $10 of music, a revisit was in order. I'll not bore you with the details of my tribulations. I did eventually manage to get my music – but let me tell you it was such a nightmare and ridden with problems.

I've not been back to their site since, but a couple articles caught my eye this week. Puretracks has announced they on a limited number of tracks and albums, they are cutting prices. They will be backing this pricing change with a television and media campaign.

No details are disclosed, but I'm guessing a campaign of that size is likely to run them a minimum of two to five million.

~sigh~

Okay. My free advice to Puretracks.

Abandon your planned media campaign.
This is the internet – the ultimate dissemination of information. If you have a worthwhile service – you will be visited in droves. How much money has Google spent in advertising? How many television ads do you see for Amazon? You are a net based service. Print and television ads, in my opinion, are an ineffective means of promoting yourself.

Make a worthwhile service
Worthwhile is not defined by exclusive. Worthwhile is not a product of co-branding. Worthwhile is something that makes life easier and convenient for people, or is enjoyable in and of itself. I use Google because it helps me find the information I'm looking for, quickly and without the clutter of pop-up ads and other annoyances. I use Amazon because I can find what I want very quickly, it gives me the information I need to make a purchasing decision, and the prices are often the best.

Take the resources you'd otherwise be throwing away on television ads that are ignored and newspaper ads that are lining the bird cage. Hire yourselves a Usability expert. Seriously assess your service and determine what is worth saving. Toss the rest and recode it all. But recode it right. Make it work for Macs. Make it work for Linux. Create the best damn music store in existence.

Final bit of advice
When you finally have things working right, it's going to take a lot of work to bring back the customers who were burned by your initial shoddy offering. There's a stat that's floating about in usability circles: for every marketing dollar spent attracting a client, it takes 100 dollars of marketing to bring them back after a bad usability experience.

My advice would be to adopt a viral model of promotion. For example: offer five bucks worth of music for everyone who registers an account and give five dollars worth of music to any registered customer who refers a new customer. Get your customers working for you in spreading the word that it's a new and improved Puretracks.

I'm Person of the Year!!!

According to ABC News, I'm Person of the year.

Okay - I share that distinction along with pretty well anyone who has a blog - but this probably as close as I'm ever going to get for that sort of distinction, so let me relish it a while.

As 1/6,600,000th a person of the year, I hearby bestow upon myself a special major award.


Yay Me!

- - -

Okay - seriously though...

Yes, I think that blogs are an interesting new development in communication, and yes, I think that they will play an important role in the delivery of news and information in years to come - but it's just another aspect of the communications that have been hapening online for years now as a result of the 'net. Usenet. Forums. Chats. MMORPGs. Personal Web Pages. Wikis. Podcasting. MoBlogging. White boards. Webcams.

The communication has been going on for a while now in many diverse and interesting forms - and I think we've only seen the tip of the iceberg.

There are bloggers out there who have blown the whistle on unethical business practices, bloggers who have brought the weight of public perception against governments, bloggers who have broke stories days, even weeks before the legacy media. There are people journalling about their personal struggles with cancer, or retelling the horrors they have seen in warzones and through natural disasters. There are blogs that are seeking to change the world, those that seek to change an industry and those that are there to change a single life.

But of the millions of blogs out there - who do does ABC News focus on? An 11 year old gal and her video diary. What's really sad is how a fluff piece like this just underscores how out of touch some members of the legacy media really are.