Take a look and let us know what you think.

Here's the link, just in case: http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_on_spaghetti_sauce.html

Here's a link, in case you can't see the embedded video: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_cobley_what_physics_taught_me_about_marketing.html

It might be worth doing some more research into understanding how jokes work, but this post on smartblogs.com is a good primer. I think it's especially relevant to advertising. Think of how many 30-second TV spots manage to be funny, not by spelling something out, but by surprising you, or letting you make your own connection, or both. 

Take a look at the post - and, of course, if you like your job, follow the advice and stay away from jokes about race, religion, or sexual orientation.

You've probably heard a lot of phrases along those lines recently, especially with the Occupy protests going on now. There's a lot of talk of things being unfair, and shrouded in secrecy.

So, what's the fix?

Co.Exist has an interesting post about a proposed solution - robots. Yes, seriously.

And it's not a bad idea, I don't think. They're right that "we could turn to robots, whose cold logic would override our selfish needs." Of course, the data source is going to be the tricky issue there.

Take a look at the article, and imagine a future where computers could weigh all the factors without any messy emotions or lobbyists, and tell us which decision would be in the best interest of society. Could be a good thing, huh?

Not every company is so location-specific of course, but if location-based stuff like this seems like a good fit for your business, it might be a good idea to keep up with this series.

Take a look at the article here.

Here at Wheel Media we've done a few projects that take advantage of Facebook tabs, and of course they can be used to direct people to your site, in a variety of ways.

And there's the idea of using a "blind item" approach - the user would have to go to your site to see what you're talking about. Curiousity can be a strong motivator!

Read the rest here: http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/5-tips-for-driving-facebook-fans-back-to-your-website/

It's worth considering an upgrade, I think. Read the full article here.

There's a LinkedIn app for your smartphone - and it's just one of many other useful apps that can help you connect with people, manage your connections, suggest places to meet up, and more. Basically there's an app for just about everything you could imagine, and more.

Take a look at a list of the 8 best, according to openforum: 
http://www.openforum.com/articles/the-8-best-apps-for-business-networking

We discovered that most of them believed, “I am a service technician and my job is to install, fix and maintain equipment.”

That's probably the job title, and that's what they were hired to do, but there's nothing in there about customer service. So there's the possibility that the technician is thinking that if the equipment gets installed, the job is done, and any additional customer service would be above and beyond the call of duty. That's not his job, he's a technician not a customer service rep.

Once they completed the process they discovered that it now made more sense to think of themselves as “Customer Satisfiers,” whose job is “to ensure that our customers are happy with our service.”

Read more here: http://www.openforum.com/articles/change-your-employees-behavioreasily?extlink=em-openf-SBdaily

This article on AdAge has some good tips for those of you who are already using it - and it might provide some good insights for those of you who aren't, too. 

Of course, it's important to have quality video content to post. 

Get in touch with Wheel Media if you’re looking for ideas on what kinds of video might fit your business. 

One of the speakers, Lee Odden, gave a talk about SEO, and from the notes he wrote here, it looks like he covered all the bases.

He spoke about a few things that are often overlooked, or underemphasized, like the importance of establishing clear objectives, measuring the results afterwards, and reporting those results to the rest of the organization.

A lot of times those are the areas that clients don't really think about too much until we start to talk to them. Everybody knows that they want to be the first result when someone searches - but the key question is searches for what? The planning process is often the most important phase of the project.

Check out PRSA's website, and Lee's article.

Basically what they're saying is, people are more receptive to advertising when aren't focusing on one thing that they care about. If someone's paying bills, or they're immersed in discussion or research about a passion of theirs (like sailing or religion, for example), they're less receptive to advertising that is irrelevant to what they're doing. An ad for a sailing supply company, or bill-paying software, would be welcome - but an ad for house paint is going to be seen as a nuisance.

On the other hand, if someone's spending time online but doesn't have a specific goal - just checking emails, seeing if there's anything interesting in the news, chatting online with friends - they're going to be much more open to ads of all types, whether they're relevant to what they're doing or not.

Read the full article on MediaWeek.

Wouldn't it be great if all of those people, who are interested in the kinds of products and services you offer - were all in the same place, and they could interact? 

Feverbee.com has got a lot of great info about online communities - including this post about how to start from zero members. This post has some good insights, too - "Your brand wont have all the attention, but that’s a good thing. You get to talk to a far bigger audience." 

"Trying too hard is one of the worst things a brand can do to get millennials' attention," said eMarketer senior analyst Lisa Phillips. "They do not trust brands or companies that make overt product pitches, but they will trust their friends and social contacts to give them the straight dope about product or retail experiences."

They're online, and they're less negative towards advertising than previous generations - but that doesn't mean they trust those brands without taking reviews from peers into consideration.

Read more

There are other options to consider, aside from the traditional venture capital route... especially if you don't need millions and millions of dollars. If you could use a little help, you might be interested in some of the services mentioned in this post on openforum... check it out.

As shown in the graphic to the right, rents are increasing (the bar graph) and office vacancy is down (the line graph). Not great news if you're a startup looking for space, but the good news is, there are startups looking for space!

Read the article on the Wall Street Journal's site.

It might turn out to be a more complicated process than you originally thought - so it's always a good idea to do some research and get some tips from people who have been there.

There are some helpful tips on openforum.com - read the article here.

Wouldn't it be great if there was some kind of formula, so every time you met someone, it worked like that?

Of course interpersonal interactions, and relationships, are too complicated to totally explain in formulas. But it is possible to look at data, find trends, and draw some conclusions.

This article talks about a book that can help you get closer, at the very least. Of course, as they say, it takes two to tango - but there are things that you can do to help foster that kind of connection with people. In business, and in your personal life.

You might even try to apply these ideas to your relationship with your customer.

Read the article and check out the book.

The first video on YouTube was uploaded 5 years ago on April 23rd, 2005. It shows YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim visiting the San Diego Zoo.

via Mashable

They're looking for startups who are already on the right track, who have raised between a quarter million and ten million, and have at least a quarter million in revenue. The winning startups will win a year of mentorship with brand managers, and access to Pepsi's PR and media firms.

What's interesting to me, though, is what they're looking for - social media and marketing, mobile marketing, place-based and retail experiential marketing, and digital video and gaming. If that's what Pepsi's looking for, maybe it's worth looking into those avenues to market your business.

It also talks about how people use social media "as an outlet to rant or rave about a company, brand or product" - but that's not surprising. People interact with thousands of brands a day, so it's inevitable that at some point a Twitter user is going to post a "review" of something - even if it's as casual as "Had a great lunch at Joe's Diner with Cindy."

Check out the article.

According to SmartBrief, 'Twitter usage exploded in 2009. U.S. site traffic, which is only a partial barometer of how many people used the service, grew from a few million unique monthly visitors in early 2009 to more than 20 million by June. Traffic has since reached a plateau, but other usage metrics continue to show high levels of engagement in early 2010. The service is now well integrated into the social-media mainstream, and usage levels are expected to continue rising, albeit more moderately, through 2012. To find out more about digital marketing and eMarketer's report "Twitter: A Strong Current in the Social Media Mainstream," click here.'

Another important factor to consider is how active all of those accounts are. The distribution of Twitter posts is pretty interesting to read about. From what I've read, the great majority of tweets come from a very small but vocal minority, and the majority of accounts in the system only post once or twice a month.

One thing that jumped out at me was at the very end of the article:

Summers said: “We use Twitter and Facebook and MySpace . . . but we still want to make sure you’re not a robot and you’re not speaking to us 3,000 miles away."

That's an important part of branding that's often overlooked. When people think of branding, they tend to think about things like logo design, using a consistent color palette and set of typefaces, standardized packaging and print materials, and that sort of thing. But it's also very important to have a consistent "tone" or "voice" in your written materials.

Have you ever read the labels on VitaminWater bottles? They're well-written, and have that kind of consistent tone that gives VitaminWater that personality that other products might be lacking. Next time you're at the store, grab a bottle and take a closer look... and think about how you can give your company a more of a personality.

Check out the full article: What Millenials Want

Should you even do anything?

Like we've said before here on Leverage, bad reviews can be surprisingly good. But should you respond to them?

This article on BusinessWeek suggests you should, and I think their reasoning makes a lot of sense. Here's what they have to say:

Would you ignore a customer who called you and complained by telephone? Probably not. Then why ignore customers complaining about your firm through social media that's instantly accessible to others? Companies shouldn't depend on customers to write positive things about them.

Read the article on BusinessWeek.com

Read through the 9 Traits of a Great Small Business, and ask yourself - what changes can we make (minor or major) to fit this profile better? Do you need to have more fun, take more risk, or allow your employees more freedom to be creative?

Read More Here.

But it can become a problem when the fundamentals are neglected, and there's nobody there to talk to your customer when they call the 800 number - or when you're so busy developing a cool Facebook app that you start to lose track of what your customers actually want.

Cool is cool - but fundamentals are fundamental.

Read Pete Blackshaw's article, Back to Boring.

As I was reading the article, TOMS Shoes came to mind as a great example of a company with the kind of higher purpose they're talking about.

Check out the article and let us know what you think.

Here are the top online marketplaces to shop your goods.

The part that I thought was most interesting was about how sites like facebook and tumblr have "like" buttons, but no similar negative option. It's literally easier to click a link and be nice, than it is to type out something mean.

It's more than that, though - I think the increasing lack of anonymity has a lot to do with it, and there's also the quest for popularity.

It's an interesting read, check it out: My Town of Kind!

www.thinkingforaliving.org

Try it.  Dig it.

thanks to the people at Core 77 for the find.  their overview is below

--

Thinking for a Living (other than being a fantastic name) is a publisher and curator of new design content, organized into Features, Curated, Digest, and Shelf. The result is part-magazine, part-blog, part-feed, and part-experience.

The site—newly redesigned during a pow-wow in the Pecos Wilderness outside of Santa Fe, New Mexico last summer—reflects the hybrid nature of the project. It side-scrolls to better accommodate the long-form content, considers the multi-touch capabilities of smart devices like the iPhone and the iPad, and focuses on typography and legibility—implemented in a 12-column grid.

The best part, for me anyway, is the embedded keyboard navigation. All of the content can be browsed without ever touching the mouse. The arrow keys scroll through and between features, and letter keys will direct you to the different sections of the site. The whole experience feels a lot more like actual reading and encourages an intimate, smooth interaction with the content, rather than a jumpy one, without ever having to own an iPad at all. If only the rest of the web were so friendly.

I don't mean to underplay the content with all this talk of its design. The first issue was launched just a couple of days ago, with contributions from Duane King, Frank Chimero, Shane Bzdok, and Core-fave Rob Giampietro (of Lined and Unlined), writing on topics like paradoxes, the origins of the serial, and Emil Ruder. Once you're done reading those, be sure to visit the other sections for curated tidbits from around the web.

Finally, read more about the redesign and navigation tools here and the brains behind the project here.

Thanks, Alissia!

We’ve always been impressed with how Yelp elegantly serves-up not just user reviews but community, geo-targeting and local search. If you’ve not seen their iPhone app, it’s outstanding.

How has Yelp affected your small business? As the article mentions, some business owners can obsess about it... but the obsessed might feel better after reading our previous post, "Bad" reviews can be surprisingly good.

Animal Cruelty Prevention for Africa, the ACPA, is a USA based non-profit charity saving dogs in Africa through health education and resources. We worked with ACPA to build a site that includes the video shot in Africa that became the starting point of the project, as well as functionality that allows visitors to donate to the cause, and spread the word to others who might be interested in helping prevent cruelty to animals.

Visit the site here >>

The gist is that social media is going to become an increasingly important part of marketing strategy. Rather than just being a side project, marketing through channels like Facebook and Twitter are going to be as serious as more traditional marketing strategies like print advertising. Expect to see more structured strategies, bigger budgets, and analytics to track the initiatives.

What do we mean by "social media?" Well, Facebook and Twitter are two of the most visible examples. The easiest way that I've found to explain the idea of social media, is to talk about who is creating the content. Places where the users create the content, like Facebook and Twitter, but also sites like YouTube, Flickr, and countless blogs and forums are social media sites.

Of course millions of people are spending significant amounts of time on those sites. Read the article to learn more about how businesses are going to start getting serious about using them as marketing tools.

Bwindi Community Hospital is a non-profit hospital and community service organization in Uganda. Rich in information for international donors and members of the community alike, the site makes use of social media outlets like YouTube, Facebook and flickr to expand their international following.

Check out the site here >>