Stardust Global Ventures

A while back Tom Foremski wrote a post called – Dirty Little Secrets: Social Media Is Terrible at Promoting Products.

I have thought about that and he’s right. Social media promotes social media, or to take it deeper, Social media is what companies use to promote themselves. But no one is successfully promoting a product with social media. What social media is doing is enabling communication.

Are Brands social? I don’t think so. We pay attention to brands because of cultivated credibility. People brands may be social, but typically by the time they reach recognizable brand status they are not nearly as social because they are too busy and bombarded, so people brands find the other people like them, and are social there. It no longer matters that they aren’t social because they have built enough credibility that WOM takes over and becomes all that matters. Even bad word of mouth rarely impacts them. Most treat that as sour grapes.

As a people brand grows, does social shifting happen where they no longer have to engage because the people who built and helped them now do all the ‘social’ for them? Is it asynchronous – where you, the brand, no longer have to be involved? I believe this to be the case.

Is the assumption that by having 100k + followers that you have then achieved such a state of brand identity you are no longer required to engage? How then do we maintain credibility? We don’t expect the products to jump off the market shelves at us as we walk through a store, why then should a people brand expect and get unconditional devotion? Do they now have whuffie, or karma to spare and other people perpetuate their brand for us?

I’d like to not confuse a Brand with Engagement. Engagement happens between people looking for something, be it friendship, products, or information, and those providing what we’re looking for. The best engagers are not the brands we already identify. Those brands have all become part of the old broadcast media mold. No, the best engagers are people who haven’t yet arrived. Hmmm, I wonder if that’s an argument for high turnover in social media? I think I’ll save that for another post.

Who of you have not heard some major brand tell you, “We listen and we respond”, only to ask a question and either get nothing in response, or get the canned response that they will respond as soon as possible but due to the massive number of requests it may take a while? Is this what we want from engagement? Can we even call this engagement? I think this is LAME!

What we want from engagement is a front facing contact, someone who is representative of the brand, not the brand, who will take the time to help us out. We don’t want someone identified as a brand because as soon as we identify a person as a brand, they have reached a status that defeats the purpose of the front facing person. A brand simply doesn’t have enough to give to that many people. Certainly not the engagement piece.

Brian Solis recently wrote the book, Engage: The complete guide for Brands and Businesses to Build, Cultivate, and Measure Success in the New Web. I haven’t personally read this book, in part because I have not had an opportunity, but there is another piece to it. I don’t think Brian engages well, except with those in his immediate universe, and I find it incredibly difficult to get excited enough to buy a book that is supposed to teach engagement from someone who is now his own brand. Certainly Brian is successful, you really can’t argue that, but why is he successful when he doesn’t eat his own dogfood? I believe Brian is successful because he has reached that brand status that many wish to reach, and yet so few ever truly achieve. But reaching that status now means he is incapable of being a person and truly engaging the way most social media people engage – which illustrates my point.

This isn’t a piece on Brian, and I’d rather not make it about him which is why I’m only linking to his book, not to him on a personal level. He is merely an example of the big picture I’m trying to paint, certainly not the only example, just a good one.

Once upon a time most Brands paid attention, asking questions about how they could do better, or what they should do differently, or even how to make your experience better. Once they get to the royalty stage, the only thing that shakes a brand up is a need to combat bad press, in other words the need to defend themselves.

You are certainly capable of making up your own mind about all this. I just had some thoughts, and where better to put them than here?

On a final note I’ll end with something I saw on twitter just moments before posting this. Practice what you preach, better yet, don’t preach. Just practice!

Makes sense, don’t you think? If you aren’t living it, walking the walk so to speak, at some point people will notice.

Technorati Tags: Tom Foremski, Sheryl Breuker, Brian Solis, Personal Brand, Engagement,

Our good friends at iotum just scored a sweet deal with Samsung Canada. If you buy a Samsung notebook between tomorrow, March 10th and April 30th, tax day for you Canadians, you will be given a free year of Calliflower Conferencing. This is a HUGE value and a fantastic service if you have a business that uses conferencing.

Please read the press release below for more details on this really fantastic opportunity!

Samsung Canada Channel Partners To Offer “Calliflower” Conferencing With New Laptops

In Exclusive Deal, Samsung Canada Resellers To Offer Multimedia, Social-Network-Style Conferencing Service to Purchasers of Select Netbooks and Laptops

OTTAWA, CANADA (March 10, 2010) – iotum announced today that Calliflower, its interactive conferencing and collaboration service, will be promoted through the VAR and system integrator channels of Samsung Canada. Under an exclusive agreement from March 1st to April 30th, 2010, Samsung resellers will offer purchasers of selected Samsung netbooks and laptops the first year of Calliflower service free, and will receive commissions when their customers sign up. 

Calliflower applies an engaging, social-networking-style visual interface to the task of conferencing and collaboration, and under standard pricing charges a $50 US monthly flat rate for unlimited use for up to two organizers.  Participants can join through local access phone numbers in major Canadian cities and around the world, or via Skype into a single conference, all while sharing presentations, documents, links, and chats with all those remotely assembled.

Calliflower’s  intuitive controls also allow participants to see the status of other callers and raise hands to request the floor, while also providing call recording, invitations and reminders, integration with calendars, and more.

“This partnership is a great way to grow customer relationships for our small-business retailers and system integrators, by offering another powerful, money-saving tool alongside our laptops and netbooks,” said Michael Dodgson, Product Marketing Manager for Netbooks at Samsung Canada. “We also see the chance to promote great Canadian technology in a space – teleworking –  that’s very much in demand.”

iotum CEO Alec Saunders, for his part, acknowledged that Samsung Canada’s promotion would provide a great boost to Calliflower’s long-term user base. “We’re so confident in the service and the sales channel, that we’re willing to offer the first year’s service for free – a $600 dollar value,” he said.

Samsung Canada resellers and retailers will have customers sign up for Calliflower through a web site, entering PC serial numbers for proof of purchase and downloading the client software.

#   #   #

About iotum

iotum is a Voice 2.0 company that aims to reinvent business conversations and shape a world of relevant communications where devices, social networks and Web services work seamlessly together to let people communicate with whom they want, when they want and on the device they want. 

About Samsung Electronics Canada Inc.

Samsung Electronics Canada, Inc. (SECA), a wholly owned subsidiary of Samsung Electronics Co., markets a broad range of award-winning digital consumer electronics, information systems, telecommunications and home appliance products. SECA upholds Samsung’s mission to provide consumers with innovative digital convergence products that possess exceptional technology, quality, features, performance and value.

Samsung has been a global TOP sponsor of the Olympic Games since 1998 and has been a presenting sponsor of the Olympic Torch Relay from 2004 to 2008.  Also through Samsung’s Four Seasons of Hope charity, Samsung helps athletes and celebrities raise funds for their respective charities, including the Wayne Gretzky Foundation in Canada.  Samsung is also a proud sponsor of Hockey Canada.

For customer service inquiries, please call 1-800-SAMSUNG (1-800-726-7864), and for more information, please visit www.samsung.com.

Social media = ROTC or Return on Trust & Credibility. I grabbed that from friend, Shashi Bellamkonda and think it incredibly compelling. One of the things we all look for when trying to understand the value of social media is a way to define it so it makes sense en masse. In attempting to define the ROI it gets a little sticky because there are so many different sets of analytics and no one can agree on a standard. For more on my thoughts on that here is an article I recently wrote for Women Grow Business in Washington DC – Replacing ROI’s Old Monetary Vision.

Last night I was pointed to a great article that actually helps remove some of the mystery around social media and the value it has in the world we live in today. One of the biggest indicators is that social media investment is minor if anything at all, and your return is potentially huge. I’m sharing from the article but I hope you’ll go and read it in it’s entirety.

The SBSI found that nearly one out of five small business owners are actively using social media in their business. Small businesses are increasingly investing in social media applications including blogs, Facebook® and LinkedIn® profiles.

And further to that is this next paragraph by small business owner Dr. Alan Glazier.

“In order to meet the growing challenges of a tough market last year, I was forced to consider alternative options to keep my business visible,” says small business owner Dr. Alan Glazier, CEO and Founder, Shady Grove Eye and Vision Care. “With a very small investment in social media marketing, I was able to generate new business opportunities. Our Google® ranking is consistently number one for many of the phrases people use to search for eye doctors in and around my city and we have received a “bump” in terms of new visitors to the site. My blog has been picked up by different news sources and led to media interviews. I am now recognized as a thought leader in social networking within my profession and lastly but most importantly, my marketing budget has been reduced by more than 80%.”

Let me just reiterate, the cost of social media is minimal. As stated above, Dr. Glazier lowered his marketing cost by 80%. What could your company do with that 80%?

Of course, it’s not enough to simply create a presence in the online world of marketing venues. People want to have a relationship with those they hire. I would caution you that engagement must be a part of your marketing campaign. Broadcast messages will not build a customer base. You must use tools, video, audio, and messaging systems to encourage a relationship.

Today, small business is winning. It’s winning because they are resourceful and far more attuned to their clients. During an economic downturn such as we have been experiencing for the past 18 + months, small business success is a key indicator of the value in social media.

Yesterday Ken wrote here on stardust three key factors to success. Adapt, Adopt, Adjust. This should be every small business’ mantra. Social media must be included in that.

Remember, Social media = ROTC or Return on Trust & Credibility. We build our trust through social communication. Credibility will follow with engagement.

The other day I posted 2009 – Ken’s Year in Review and promised I’d follow up with this requisite annual blogger’s rite, my look ahead. There may be some bumps in the road and unexpected twists here, so hang on dear reader. Put your tray table in the upright and locked position, raise your seat back and make sure your seatbelt is securely fastened. I’ve never been particularly shy or softspoken about my look at the future, and I probably won’t be now.

Disclaimer: These are my opinions alone. They don’t necessarily reflect the opinions of any employer past or present, my lovely partner Sheryl, the companies named herein, or anyone else on the planet. Your opionions and mileage may vary widely. Cheap shot comments will be tossed into the abyss, but open conversation and debate is always welcome.

Disclaimer 2: This is not only an opinionated post, it’s a long one. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Early in 2009 I predicted it was going to be the year Cisco took a big black eye. I agree, that didn’t happen. Instead they’ve taken a light bruising all year long. 2009 was a year when Cisco excelled at absolutely nothing that mattered in the market in my view. They were vanilla custard and simply didn’t matter in the market. They got off easy, and in 2010 they won’t. I said a black eye in 2009. I’ll predict a savage beating in 2010, the likes of which they’ve never felt before. I bet you’re curious where, aren’t you?

First in unified communications and VoIP space. I’d say Cisco is going to get their lunch eaten by multiple players. The Cisco solution set is pretty decent (Call Manager and the like), although their phones are forgettable. It won’t matter. I think they’ll get beaten repeatedly by Lucent, Asterisk, Mitel, and others. Even IBM, yes IBM, will cause pain for Cisco. 2010 will be the year Cisco learns how much they don’t know about telecommunications. It will be a bitter pill to swallow.

They bought Pure Digital for the Flip and they’re about to get a bunch of hype for the new Flip with built-in WiFi. I give that buzz six weeks and then they’ll take a good old fashioned, bare knuckles ass whuppin from the likes of Kodak’s Zi8 and a handful of others. More importantly, the current generation of cameras built in to mobile phones, notably iPhone and Blackberry, are likely to shift up taking another huge bite out of the whole dedicated camera market.

Then there’s Cisco’s core business – switching and routing. Coupled with some repercussions of the recent Starent acquisition and Juniper getting serious about the market, I expect some big moves in this space. Juniper will play big and strong. The big dog, Cisco, is going to get rocked back on their heels in some major networking deals in 2010. People will start to think about other options more often before simply choosing Cisco.

Oh, and John Chambers, the Rupert Murdoch of networking, will finally move on. I’ve seen his leadership at Cisco as ineffective in recent years and I expect him to move on, flying off with his golden parachute.

Then we have Yahoo. The worn and beleaguered Yahooligans will continue trickling out the door at every opportunity. There’s still a lot of talent at Yahoo and they are ripe for the picking. They don’t have that many execs left from the old days. Jerry Wang’s departure was really good for Yahoo. Replacing him with Carol Bartz was, IMHO, not a good move. Other than trying to prove her balls by swearing, she’s done nothing that I’d expect from a CEO leading a company. She needs to go. I believe in 2010 she’s out the door. She can take the flying monkees with her too.

Of course there’s Microsoft, the Gorgon with more snakes in its head than Medusa. (Yes, the irony of Gorgons being female is intentional, for a reason…read on). I expect more layoffs at MS. Significantly more. Microsoft is still a very fat company, with plenty of trimming to do. In 2010, I think they’ll do some in the right areas. They’ve missed the mark a time or two with cutbacks, and some course corrections will happen this year. OCS will do well, especially against Cisco. Momentum will gain there.

Most importantly, I think Steve Ballmer will depart. He isn’t good for MS. I think many people feel that way, but nobody says it. I expect him to leave MS and land somewhere equally visible. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s somewhere near either Redwood Shores or Pleasanton in California. ‘Nuff said.

Oh, and MS in an effort to prove they’re not evil and soften their image will place a woman in a very visible leadership role, perhaps Ballmers. We should hope it won’t be Carol Bartz, although she certainly seems to cast a flirtatious eye toward Redmond every now and then.

Yes, there is plenty more if you’re still here. Continue reading “2010 – Ken’s Look Ahead” »

One of the COOLEST campaigns out there is Drew Olanoff’s fight against his own cancer, Hodgkins Lymphoma. Something he started early on was what he called, simply, Blame Drews Cancer. All you had to do was tweet out something like this: I #blamedrewscancer for….(fill in the blank with whatever annoys you). It got a bit of buzz, was inspirational and people really got behind a man so determined to win his own personal fight. Except it’s not just a fight for him, it’s a fight for everyone.

Drew is an amazing guy, someone who decided he wasn’t going to let ‘cancer’ beat him. And he hasn’t. The last tests showed, well maybe you should just read the results in his own words and then come back here and finish this off.

Of course who of us has been untouched by cancer? I can tell you for me personally I lost my grandmother to it in 1982, my father to it in 1986, and just a little less than 5 years ago my mother got sick. I went to help her out and was told by the doctor she had colon cancer and in her physical state there was nothing they could do. I was then asked to share this news with my mom. She died 3 short weeks later, the night I arrived home.

Drew’s example of fighting has touched me personally. Yeah we follow each other, yeah we’ve had a couple of conversations, but his story is so incredibly inspirational, I really want to support him. His fight has taken on a life of it’s own and he is the driver. Through all the throwing up, stomach ailments, weakness just plain nasty feelings that come with treating cancer with chemotherapy, he has remained strong and LOUDLY proclaiming his absolute assurance that he will BEAT this. He provides hope unlike any other person I have ever seen to every one of us who have battled this or anything like this in our lives.

But Drew’s story doesn’t end there. He got an idea. He decided to do something bigger. Boy did he decide to do something bigger! Drew Olanoff was early to the twitter game. He got a rather cool 4 letter name, @drew on twitter back in the beginning. he also got a brainstorm. How about auctioning off his name to the highest bidder? He checked with the powers that be at twitter headquarters and they agreed for this sort of thing to make an exception to their TOS.

Drew Carey, from the Drew Carey Show, Whose Line is it Anyway?, current host of The Price is Right and @DrewFromtv, started with 12k followers on twitter when he got wind of Drew Olanoff’s cancer challenge. He threw his hat into the cancer ring offering to donate $25k then quickly upping it to $100k if he got an equal number of followers by Nov. 9th, Drew Olanoff’s birthday. But it didn’t end there.

Drew Carey has now raised the bar yet again stating on his network, CBS, that should he get 1 million followers by midnite Dec. 31st, he will donate 1 million dollars to LIVESTRONG.com, Lance Armstrong’s Foundation which is also paired up with Drew Olanoff. Amazing!

What can you do? It’s simple really and won’t cost you a dime. All you have to do to make this happen is follow @DrewFromtv. If you don’t have a twitter account get one. Go to the twitter site, create an account and make a follow for @DrewFromtv your first piece of business. If you already have an account, you know what to do. What are you out for a HUGE donation to fight cancer? A click of the mouse, my friends. Your 1 click can make all the difference. Just do it already. This is a CHALLENGE to all my friends, my entire network. Let’s get 1 million dollars to fight cancer. We can do it! We’ve seen a real miracle already. Together we can make another one.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Technorati Tags: drew olanoff, drew carey, hodgkins lymphoma, twitter, @drew, @drewfromtv, livestrong foundation,

Ken has had the pleasure of writing several pieces for TheNextWeb in the past and we both follow Zee and Boris’ work there. For those of us engaged in consulting work, freelancing, and perhaps most importantly social media (or social marketing) the idea of a code of conduct gets circulated in conversation pretty regularly. It gets a lot of discussion, but often seems to just be so much banter and noise.

As Boris pointed out in his recent post Entrepreneurial Code of Conduct: Take the Oath… , “Doctors have the Hippocratic Oath. It is an ethical framework on which they can fall back when they have doubts about the right course of action.”

Many professional groups other than doctors hold themselves to a standard of conduct among peers. Lawyers, professional engineers, accountants and other professions have long held to acceptable norms of conduct that are frequently documented and shared. In the Internet world, not so much.

Boris said in his post, “Today I would like to make a start with an Entrepreneurial Code of Conduct. We might call it Schumpeter’s Oath, after Joseph Schumpeter, the economist credited with introducing the concept of the Entrepreneur. Or simply the Entrepreneurs Oath.”

We like what this embodies and appreciate that it mirrors many of the values we hold up as standards. As we entrench ourselves in work efforts here in Walla Walla, this seems a good time and place to share those values with the business community here so they know what they can expect from us.

The Entrepreneurial Code of Conduct
I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:

• I will respect the hard-won experience of those entrepreneurs in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
• I will apply, for the benefit of my customers, shareholders and partners all measures [that] are required, avoiding self enrichment
• I will remember that there is art to entrepreneurial activities as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the managers skills or the businessman’s experience
• I will not be ashamed to say “I know not,” nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a company or project success.
• I will respect the privacy of my customers, partners and shareholders, for their information is not to be disclosed to the world. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of profit and loss. If it is given me to make profit, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to lose my shareholders money; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
• I will remember that I do not serve an anonymous person, but a human being, whose needs may affect the person’s family, business and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the customer and everybody affected by my actions as an entrepreneur.
• I will prevent problems caused by my business whenever I can, for the social impact of my company is as important as its goal of turning a profit.
• I will remember that I and my company remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body and well as rich and poor.
• If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life, friendship, revenues and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of serving those who seek to acquire my products, services or company.

Technorati Tags: code of conduct, consultants, entrepreneurs, advisors, Sheryl Breuker Media, Ken Camp Consulting

Tonight my son was coming home. My 17 year old son. He has spent some time in Canada visiting friends and family etc. and was due home tonight. I was to pick him up at Walla Walla Regional Airport. I won’t be picking him up there, now.

My ex husband made the ticket arrangements to fly David from Northern BC to Walla Walla. It’s been done a ton of times. David was flying international, like always, and had to make a connection in Seattle to get a little commuter flight to Walla Walla. And then the trouble began.

David typically flies into Seattle or Spokane from Vancouver. Since he was flying into Walla Walla he needed to make a connection in Seattle and when he has had to do that we have always gotten him tickets ensuring there will be plenty of time between flights. This didn’t work today.

David’s flight from Vancouver arrived in Seattle at 7:10. The two flights getting him to Seattle were with Air Canada. The flight from Vancouver arrived late. His flight from Seattle was supposed to leave at 8:00, but Horizon failed to state clearly that in order to get on the flight, luggage must be checked in 40 minutes in advance, and the person flying must be checked in 30 minutes in advance. Advance of gate closure, not flight time. Gate closure is 15 minutes prior to departure. Which means, in order for David to make the flight to Walla Walla he would have needed to not only depart his plane which landed at 7:10, and have luggage in hand and checked in by 7:05. Can you guess what they said to me on the phone? There are no more flights out tonight and he will have to spend the night here.

I flew into a rage yelling that they were forcing a minor to stay in a strange city and they had no right to do that and why couldn’t they just get him through anyway…he was ONE child! Eventually I asked to speak to a supervisor who insisted it was Air Canada’s fault and we should ask them to provide a voucher for David to spend the night. I yelled again and said wait a minute. He’s a minor child in a strange city and you expect him to handle all this on his own when the airlines made a mistake and his safety is now compromised?

Finally the supervisor said we can get him on a flight to Pasco, which is an hour away, but you will have to pay the transfer fees and taxes etc. Are you willing to do that? Did she expect me to say no??? I said of course I would but it was again ludicrous I was expected to pay additional fees for a problem I had not created and a flight that is SHORTER than originally requested. Eventually she came back on the phone and said they would make an exception this one time and not charge me the additional fees and she hoped we learned a lesson. I did. Do NOT fly HORIZON or AIR CANADA!

Pat Phelan , the king of disruption in telephony, was my guest today. He is the president and founder of Cubic Telecom. Pat’s company has developed many different things among them MAXroam, a sim card that now through partnership can be branded for any company using their own logo. MAXroam allows affordable rates for roaming when visiting a myriad of countries.

As part of this Incidental Interview I got an exclusive piece of information. Pat’s company, Cubic Telecom is partnering with ShoZu to provide freedom from worry when you’re abroad with regard to sending pictures over the air. A really great partnership! WTG Pat and ShoZu!

I met Pat at VON.x. I have grown to truly respect his great desire to champion the underdog and go out on a limb to provide a service that has been incredibly useful to so many people.

Read all about Pat here.

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Calliflower from iotum announced the the expansion of the international dial-in network for their premium service. It is now available for conference calling and document sharing in 30 countries around the globe. Calliflower now offers a flat-rate conference calling from over 100 cities world wide! This is quite an expansion and a huge value for the global business. With their flat-rate international calls, many customers can see a savings of up to 90%. This is potentially huge for any business.

Here’s a link to what the real costs of free conference call services may be, and just how Calliflower saves you money.

iotum is a Voice 2.0 company that aims to reinvent business conversations and shape a world of relevant communications where devices, social networks and Web services work seamlessly together to let people communicate with whom they want, when they want and on the device they want.

We highly recommend Califlower for professionals looking for a program that is great quality, offers superb value and saves YOU money. There is really no better collaboration tool on the market, especially not at their price point.

Press Release for Calliflower.

Several conversations over the past couple of weeks left me thinking about the role a Marketing VP or Director plays in guiding the social media strategy businesses embrace. Given my place in the tech sector, I think about these things all the time, but anyone reading the web spots things that resonate and leave thought processes running in background until they gel into something cohesive. These little nuggets of thought apply to personal branding as well. Sometimes the two contexts blur, but there are nuances of difference.

One of the smartest and most insightful people I’ve ever encountered is Euan Semple. If you don’t know who Euan is, a good starting point is his blog, aptly named The Obvious. Here’s a simple tweet from Euan that really sets the tone:

Instinctively, the idea of anyone directing social media engagement or involvement for a business sounds like a very bad idea. Social media is all about conversation – dialogue – discussion – the exchange of ideas. In principle, I subscribe to Stowe Boyd‘s Social Media, Defined:

Social Media are those forms of publishing that are based on a dynamic interaction, a conversation, between the author and active readers, in contrast with traditional broadcast media where the ‘audience’ is a passive ‘consumer’ of ‘content’. The annotations or social gestures left behind by active readers, such as comments, tags, bookmarks, and trackbacks, create an elaborate topology resting on the foundational blog posts, and this enhanced meta-environment, the blogosphere, is the context for and the realization of a global collaboration to make sense of the world and our place in it.

Dynamic interaction. I like that a lot. Not static messaging. Not stale platitudes about a product or service. Dynamic interaction that weaves throughout every interaction with our friends, colleagues, customer and business partners. Sheryl would like that. Her passion is engagement. Nobody’s passive. We can’t be passive. If we stop participating, we will stagnate and die. There are no consumers. There are engaged participants.

So how does the successful Marketing VP guide a company to embracing this ideal? Nobody can direct social engagement. It’s a dynamic organism that we can either feed or starve. Starvation leads to death in any organism. For the business to flourish, we have to move to a different mindset. Using social media to “grow the business” is assuredly a path to failure. That approach is looking to extract value from a victim. We must find our way to add value to the organism. The question any good Marketing VP should ask before going to bed at night is how can we add even more value tomorrow?

Consider Seth Godin’s First, Ten:

This, in two words, is the secret of the new marketing.

Find ten people. Ten people who trust you/respect you/need you/listen to you…

Those ten people need what you have to sell, or want it. And if they love it, you win. If they love it, they’ll each find you ten more people (or a hundred or a thousand or, perhaps, just three). Repeat.

If they don’t love it, you need a new product. Start over.

Your idea spreads. Your business grows. Not as fast as you want, but faster than you could ever imagine.

This approach changes the posture and timing of everything you do.

You can no longer market to the anonymous masses. They’re not anonymous and they’re not masses. You can only market to people who are willing participants. Like this group of ten.

The timing means that the idea of a ‘launch’ and press releases and the big unveiling is nuts. Instead, plan on the gradual build that turns into a tidal wave. Organize for it and spend money appropriately. The fact is, the curve of money spent (big hump, then it tails off) is precisely backwards to what you actually need.

Three years from now, this advice will be so common as to be boring. Today, it’s almost certainly the opposite of what you’re doing.

Perhaps the greatest value Godin’s ideas give us is their pure simplicity. Simple, elegant and real. In many ways, Godin is our new media marketing Albert Einstein who said “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler“. The idea of focusing on our first ten most important people as individuals, entrepreneurs and small companies is really simple. It’s something I’ve personally been thinking about how to do better. My personal watchword for several years has been simplify, yet even for an individual, it’s easy to drift from that mantra. Speaking of simplicity, it applies to every aspect of marketing too.

One of the problems of business is that corporate culture and simplicity are often moving in opposite directions. The enemy is usually corporate culture, which exists in every business made up of two or more people. This corporate culture, once a business begins to grow, takes on an element of risk aversion. With many businesses, risk aversion quickly leads to stagnation and “sticking to what we know.” While that may have worked yesterday, and may work this week, next week it isn’t going to work any more. Next week, your competitor is going to eat your lunch, and you won’t even see it coming.

I hear business managers around the world groaning and saying what we do is successful. We’ve been making good profit and revenue growth year after year. We’re ok. Get your head out of the sand and pull yourself out of ostrich mode folks. If you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you’re going to keep getting the results you’ve been getting. The results you’ve been getting aren’t good enough. Period!

If you think what you’ve done up to now is effective and what you need to keep doing, you may as well crawl into your coffin and pull the lid closed. And if you’re a Marketing VP and you believe that, you’re putting your company on the short list for the deadpool. You’re holding back and trying to play it safe in the information age. In the information age, nobody is safe. The network, your customers, your business partners and your competitors are clawing, scratching, biting and gnawing their way to success every day online.

You can invest yourself, your resources and your efforts in success through engagement, or you can be the cold and bloody carcass we’ll crawl over. And, with deference to the hacker culture, you can think of us as dragons for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup. We will gnaw your bones and suck the marrow out. And we’ll enjoy taking sustenance from your lackadaisical mindset that what you do today is good enough.

The only way to succeed is to engage with the community that is your universe. That community includes your employees, your customers, your business partners and your competitors. Beyond that, it includes every new startup who might be that invisible disruptor to your industry. To thrive, you must actively engage at every turn, every conversation, every opportunity. You can’t sit idly by and wait for the chance to engage to come your way. If you aren’t out in front proactively engaging, you’re issing the boat. We’re sailing from the dock and you’re going to miss an incredible ride.

Corporate culture is the key. In my past life as a sales director, my team lived the life that every person in the company is a salesperson. That’s still true, but there’s so much more than that today. Every person – employee, customer, business partner, even your competitor – is an evangelist for you and your company. Let them evangelize by encouraging engagement and conversation.

Conversation is a two way street. If your wish is to broadcast a message, I’ve got news for you. You can stick your head where the sun never shines and broadcast away. That’s how effective you’re going to be. Broadcast is newspaper print ads. Newspapers are dead. Broadcast is old media. Old media has contracted a cancer from which it cannot recover. It’s dying. Broadcast is Madison Avenue ad agencies. Madision Avenue is the new ghost town. They don’t know it yet, but that tired old ad agency model is tied to broadcast and broadcast is dead.

As the VP of Marketing, your job is to be the champion. The champion of doing the right thing. The champion of engagement. The champion of change. We’ve all heard the tired old platitude of embracing change. What a crock. That is so 1965. If you embrace change, you’re waiting for something to happen instead of making things happen. You have to get off your chair and go make change by engaging.

Real leaders are engaged at every turn. It’s an always-on, hyperconnected world. If you take time off and fail to engage, you just retired in place. Move over. Someone else will take your place. I will.

Technorati Tags: Euan Semple, @euan, Stowe Boyd, Seth Godin, marketing, social media, leadership

Jeff Pulver has once again given me a reason to believe he is one of the greatest people I know. He is offering scholarships to 20 people to attend SocComm, his latest iteration of future technologies in social media conference, and all you have to do is email him or facebook message him. Here, read it from his blog.

Jeff Pulver is an awesome man. He stimulates my brain, but he does more than that. he inspires hope and even at times awe. I know those are strong words, but in truth there isn’t another person I identify more with, with regard to future thinking in technology. No, that doesn’t mean I have the same great ideas, what it means is I think Jeff has the ability to look further down the road than most and I definitely aspire to that myself.

Anyway, in case you don’t know, Ken and I are friends with Jeff…in real life as well as online. We’ve had some interesting adventures, or misadventures if you’d rather. Don’t miss this opportunity to get in on a conference that will give you more food for thought than you can get any other way.

WTG Jeff!

Technorati Tags: Jeff Pulver, SocComm, scholarships

This evening we had the chance to chat on the phone with Geraldine Wilson, CEO of Truphone. She’s at MacWorld and CES this week, to spread the word about a couple of big announcements. Since we spoke to her together, we’re writing this up together and sharing our thoughts with each other as we share them with you.

Rather than parrot the press releases, here they both are. We already mentioned the Skype integration here:

• TRUPHONE INTRODUCES SKYPE CALLING AND INSTANT MESSAGING TO iPHONE AND iPOD TOUCH APPLICATIONS
• TRUPHONE ADDS INSTANT MESSAGING AND TWITTER TO ITS iPHONE AND iPOD TOUCH APPLICATIONS

Ken has expressed a bit of dissatisfaction here with regard to Truphone issues. You can read My Disappointment of the Year 2008 – Truphone for Ken’s comments.

We’re always looking to learn more about what cutting edge companies are doing, but we also really felt compelled to ask some questions that get to the heart of things. We’re neither podcasting or transcribing our interview. We didn’t record it. We simply took some notes and kept track of our reactions. And we’re sharing those reaction with you here.

We noted that the news announcements are oriented very specifically at iPhone/iPod and we asked about that. Specifically, we asked about these new features and when we’ll see them on other devices using Truphone. We also talked about account support for users with multiple phones and Truphone accounts. And we chatted about Truphone’s organization in general.

Here are some of our thoughts:

Ken: I almost want to use iTruphone to refer to this now. It was clear to me that the company is focused almost solely on the iPhone/iPod. Geraldine said they’re focused on devices that include WiFi and have an app store support. Given the newness and questionable, to me, viability of what I’ve seen in the Blackberry app store (something I just won’t ever bother with), that statement alone narrows the field a lot.

I came away feeling like Truphone is building almost exclusively for the iPhone/iPod, with RIM coming in a distant second, although there’s potential. And what about Nokia? What I wrote down during the call was that it sounds like Nokia just became a third world nation. I don’t think they’re even on the radar or in the game.

Sheryl: Geraldine was really apologetic about the struggles Ken and I have had in our experience with Truphone and was quite insistent that they are working very hard to get it right. Their goal, as you would expect, seems to be to make sure their existing customers have a good experience. She also said that they are working to make it possible to have one account that would work from whatever device you would be on.

Part of what I got from this conversation has to do with the fact that they are reorganizing their company. With that Truphone no longer will have a specific presence in the conference circuit. PR is still being handled by Comunicano but Geraldine, James Tagg, and others will share the conference duties, each attending what makes sense for them.

Our Overall Reaction: Truphone is more focused than we’ve seen them before, but almost entirely focused on the iPhone/iPod market right now. Geraldine also made it clear that Truphone sees more users in that audience than any other. And given that, they offered us access to start testing and playing with the new stuff coming out next week. We won’t release any early information, but we will have more to say after we’ve done some testing ourselves.

Technorati Tags: Truphone, Sheryl Breuker, Ken Camp, interview, Geraldine Wilson

Note: One of the comments on this particular post point out that another person also had written a post pointing out the obvious lack of web savvy by the local news stations. Here is a link to that post.

I use twitter very actively and I believe in Social communications across the board. Due to a recent barrage of local, Spokane Wa., followers of my twitter account, I stumbled across the web services of our local news teams. We have 4 network affiliates. Krem2 – CBS,  KXLY4 – ABC, KHQ6 – NBC, KAYU28 – FOX.

Out of almost a sense of obligation I wanted to follow my local news teams for up to date weather, largely because we’ve made national weather and the weather has been bad around here so far this year. What I learned was a little distressing because in todays web world I expect my news teams to have a clue about what’s going on in the world of technology.

First thing I learned, there is only one news person of any ilk paying even slight attention to anything on twitter. He is the Gadget Guy from KXLY tv. I don’t want to get into my opinion of what he’s doing, suffice to say I know a lot of people a lot more gadget savvy than he is.

The heart of the problem for me was how web 1.0 these TV stations present themselves. It’s disgraceful! My award for absolute WORST website of all of them is KHQ, which is hardly surprising when you consider they have no representation in the socnet arena at all. None. Probably the best represented with less clutter was KAYU.

What makes KHQ a 1.0 website you ask and what does that even mean? Several things.

First, one of the things that happens when you land on their site is a pop up ad. I didn’t think those were even done anymore. That has got to be one of the single most annoying things anyone EVER decided was a good idea. And their ad is particulalrly intrusive.

Second, all the sites have ads, but KHQ has the most ads and the most clutter.

Third, a website should be easy to navigate, have a list of headlines, archived pages for reference and not a lot of stuff to distract. People are easily annoyed with all the garbage they have to wade through. KHQ, again, hasn’t figured out how to limit the number of things on a page and only have the TOP stories there in an easy to navigate site.

To be fair, none of the websites were great at their design. Here’s a quote from my partner, Ken Camp:

In the Internet world, brands and advertising are at much greater risk. The real estate available to work with is typically something around 1280 pixels high and 800 pixels wide (or thereabouts). But the attention span of an Internet user may be slightly shorter than that of a flea (at least speaking for myself).

Misuse our time on the Internet, and your life can be ended with one click. One click and you’re history. Two clicks, and you can be blocked into the abyss forever; your message buried and forgotten for all time.

Something that bothers me about the way our local media is connecting with, and representing their TV Stations to, the community can be summed up by another quote from an earlier post here:

I can’t count the number of times I’ve talked about the human social need to form communities. Twitter is such a community. The strength and value comes from people.

When people represent a brand, like RichardatDELL for example, good things happen. Richard has brought a human face to Dell because he engages as a person. As an individual, Richard reads, follows, engages in conversation and participates in the community. People add value.

I think one of the most important aspects of the engagement we see in the social networking communities today, whether they be on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or some other place, is that people are truly connecting with people. The power of the Internet lies in people. It hasn’t been that long ago that the marketing buzz/hype was all about content. Many of the carriers still believe content is king, and are trying to find a way to monetize content. They are doomed to fail.

All these news people, brands, etc pretending to engage with ‘us’ in social media like twitter, might as well not bother rather than throw up a site that isn’t engaging, or putting up a dummy account on twitter where no engagement happens at all.

One thing Ken and I try to explain to people all the time is how important engagement is. A Television station who suggests to it’s employees that someone put an account online so they have presence is sorely mistaken if they think that gets them brownie points with anyone. It doesn’t.

I’d love to do an interview with the chief conversation officer or director in charge of social media engagement at these local stations. The problem I see is that they appear not to have one. How archaic.

Technorati Tags: KHQ, KREM, KXLY, KAYU, Gadget Guy, johnny5, NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX, twitter

I’ve written and talked about how Twitter provides more than simply a stream of information. It’s a real-time idea exchange between people. For me, that’s an important point – it’s between people. I’ve been using Twitter for quite a long time, and am not one of those Twitterati who follows thousands of people. I follow 133 at the moment, and for now 384 follow me.

Twitter is for me about connecting with people – with my friends and colleagues in humanity – the real people with whom I exchange ideas. Here’s an exchange that took place this morning with one of those friends:

shelisrael OK. I will write a chapter about humans, brands & which is which from my perspective for Twitterville.

shelisrael I believe social media gives companies a chance to show their humanity. I think its unwise to hide humans behind a little tweeted icon.

kencamp @shelisrael Humanity is where the value of the ‘Net comes in. Brands are nothing but overhead. A tax on humanity.

shelisrael @kencamp You should flesh that idea out into a blog. I’m highly likely to point to it and maybe include in this new chapter.

And that prompted this post, because the idea is interesting, and writing a post about Twitter provides the easiest way to share ideas with Shel. We rarely see each other in person. For those of us who are active Twitterholics, with a daily habit to feed, it’s all about the people.

In Small Pieces Loosely Joined, David Weinberger’s premise is that:

500 million of us aren’t there because we want a better “shopping experience.” The Web, a world of pure connection, free of the arbitrary constraints of matter, distance and time, is showing us who we are – and is undoing some of our deepest misunderstandings about what it means to be human in the real world.

The small pieces loosely joined by the Internet aren’t brands, advertisers or commercial businesses. They’re people. Stowe Boyd refers to us all as edglings because we “live” at the edge of the ‘Net.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve talked about the human social need to form communities. Twitter is such a community. The strength and value comes from people.

When people represent a brand, like RichardatDELL for example, good things happen. Richard has brought a human face to Dell because he engages as a person. As an individual, Richard reads, follows, engages in conversation and participates in the community. People add value.

I think one of the most important aspects of the engagement we see in the social networking communities today, whether they be on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or some other place, is that people are truly connecting with people. The power of the Internet lies in people. It hasn’t been that long ago that the marketing buzz/hype was all about content. Many of the carriers still believe content is king, and are trying to find a way to monetize content. They are doomed to fail.

The bottom line is that people, connecting with people are what powers the Internet and gives it vitality and value.

Internet marketers, hyping the idea of promoting a brand proliferate madly. They’re out of control. For the most part, they’re snake oil hucksters whose clients deserve to lose every penny. Those clients are investing in the charlatan’s great lie that brands interact with people. Brands are nothing more than a logo. Customers will make or break a brand in the traditional brick and mortar world over time based on customer interaction and service.

In the Internet world, brands and advertising are at much greater risk. The real estate available to work with is typically something around 1280 pixels high and 800 pixels wide (or thereabouts). But the attention span of an Internet user may be slightly shorter than that of a flea (at least speaking for myself).

Misuse our time on the Internet, and your life can be ended with one click. One click and you’re history. Two clicks, and you can be blocked into the abyss forever; your message buried and forgotten for all time.

Brands and advertising are simply a tax we users pay. They’re overhead. And we pay the tax in order to connect with other people. If we want to buy a product, we know where to find it. If we want to review it, we don’t really care that somebody we don’t know personally (who is all to often a sock puppet – fake user) gave your piece of rubbish 5 stars. We’re intelligent, thinking humans. We like real interaction and we like talking to real people.

Brands are a tax on the Internet. They tax our time, our bandwidth and our attention. And we pay the price — up to a point. But as a native Californian, I remember Proposition 13 pretty well. If you insist on pretending that your brand can interact with our humanity, a point will come when we will be mad as hell and not take it any more.

The promoters of brands, whether they’re internal marketing teams or external PR teams – or for that matter the outside self-proclaimed experts in social media – need to understand the fundamental root power of the Internet. That power is with people.

People.

Not mushrooms. You can’t feed us BS and keep us in the dark.

Talking louder won’t get your message through. We don’t want to be force fed your message, but we’re smart enough to know when you try. And when you do, our ears, eyes and attention turn elsewhere. You are easily disposed of if you’re a brand. You can be sent to the bit bucket eternally, and your brand, your product, your client suffers.

That’s a pretty high price to pay for ignoring the most basic tenet of sales – people buy from people.

If you want to succeed in social media, engage your people. If you have a product, I don’t care how good it is, your people are your best asset. Set your people free to engage and watch the magic that happens when you push the brand to the background and people to the foreground.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, brands, branding, social media, marketing, sales

Ken’s annoyed. We were out running a couple of errands and Ken got notification that someone was following him on twitter. We both always click through to see if a person is real, someone we know with an odd name, or someone we want to block. Ken blocked this person. This person linked to a post on blogspot that talks about important twitter people. Ken was listed as one of the ‘important people’.

As Ken’s partner in both business and life, I was quite pleased for him making a list like that. Really excited because I see him as important and interesting, certainly it’s one of the reasons we became friends initially, and he is certainly guilty of undervaluing himself, at least some of the time. Also the list was not huge. I’ve seen lists before of things like this. Typically there are a ton of people and neither of us make those lists. Those are lists for Scoble or Brogan.

So, really, why is Ken annoyed? Well, we started looking the list over and it became quite evident that people we KNOW are important and who spend a great deal of time twittering with something to say, and more to the point, with a great number of followers and followees, weren’t on the list. Worse than those who were missed was one stand out for BOTH of us. Someone we both followed, had had actual conversations with, someone we both admired and respected, and someone who died almost a year ago.

I will not mention names. I think it serves no purpose. It could hurt someone, and I suppose it could actually make someone feel good that all this time later he is still listed as important, but what is the VALUE in telling people he is an important person to follow on twitter when he can no longer actually add you back, can no longer interact, can no longer engage? Further, how in the world did a list like that get made with someone who is no longer living listed on it?

In thinking about this list, my hackles were raised. You see, Ken and I really think social media is important. We truly see the value both in personal and business relationships. we not only see value, we promote it. We absolutely love the way social media has interrupted the status quo and brought about a globalization of people. A coming together of new ideas and the opportunity to connect on so many different levels, engaging in a way that 20 years ago was simply not possible.

What a list like this does is denigrate the truly great strides in social technology we have made and puts a dark cloud on it’s value in our society. For instance, how do you think a person who knows little about a little social app, little about the players in the tech space, will feel when he/she discovers that one of the people they have chosen to follow on a list created only today passed away almost a year ago? For all intents and purposes a whole segment of society, newbies, certainly, are being made fun of. That’s not only foolish but disrespectful.

Ken’s words are, “This is a clueless newbie. A cluetard. Somebody trying to gain notoriety by scavenging.” “This devalues the information out there on the ‘net.” I agree.

To those of you trying to gain a foothold, let me offer a piece of advice. Know your facts. Don’t make arbitrary lists. Ask questions. And for those of you using software to ante up numbers or figures, you still have to do some research. Statistics can be skewed to say anything.

It’s not ok what you just did. It’s not ok to intentionally put something out there that has potential to cause such harm. I think your list is pathetic. It’s useless crap. It didn’t, however, take away my pride in my Partner. I know what matters and who. Your list doesn’t make MY list.

Technorati Tags: ken camp, sheryl breuker,