<rant> Bit of a rant, so please forgive me – and I’m the first to admit, that I have often failed to follow these obvious steps many times – as it requires time and effort to follow them.  Just take a look at my old posts for evidence – and then refrain from publicly shaming me – please?

IMHO way too many people jump from Step 1. An Observation to Step 7 writing an informative and accessible article – immediately followed by pushing the Publish button.  </rant>

Six Steps to follow before you post

Anybody else feeling that way?

this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype

The Six Steps I wish everyone would follow before they push – Publish

Take 30 minutes every two to three month to browse through your contacts at LinkedIn, Xing, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ to stay on top of who you know…

You will be surprised, how with the constant fluctuation – people changing roles and moving to new companies – you all of a sudden have a wealth of direct personal contacts at Google, Microsoft, Techcrunch, Yahoo! aso. (replace examples with companies in your industry).

The hidden Network

But lets be specific – here is an example, of what I suspect is not an uncommon oversight.

I failed to check my contacts when joining MSFT and didn’t realize that e.g.  Mark Law someone I worked with during my time at Yahoo! Local & Maps, was and is still working for Microsoft – including the time I worked there.

He was part of the Yahoo! Local US team in Sunnyvale and a recent guest at our offices in London. He even invited us to a lovely dinner in his home when we were visiting the Yahoo! HQ in California. He even introduced me to the joy golf – that I still practice today. I remain on the fence if I will ever be able to forgive him for that introduction

Now just knowing Mark was a co-worker and making sure to meet for a lunch/coffee when visiting MSFT HQ in Seattle might not have changed my world or his – but chances are that it would have at the very least been great to catch up and share insights. And as we all know that business lives off and is driven by personal relationships – so who knows…

So I urge you have a look from time to time you will be surprised who you know.

Pro Tip: It gets even more exciting if you realize that connecting two of your contacts that don’t know each other but work in the same company, on related topics or just moved to the same country, does not only help them but strengthens your relationship both ways.

Maybe obvious to people in sales and areas of the like – who live by their roller-deck – but for everybody else this might be a reminder that -

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

― John Hughes, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype

The powerful network – you didn’t realize you had

Couldn’t help myself….

this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype

Today Mark Zuckerberg called Danny Sullivan

One great piece of advice I got from Suzy Hay now Head of Business Development, iAd at Apple, back in the day when we were both working for Yahoo!, was that she suggested I made sure to have a one on one with my manager every now and then to specifically  talk about what she or he wanted me to do.

Yahoo! Offices London – Team Answers

And I’m not talking about “do your project  x work” or “make sure x is delivered on time and within budget”. Whilst these are perfectly reasonable things, you should talk with your manager about, what I’m trying to get at is that you should take time to find out what he/she really wants you to do.

This has proven to be a very effective means of getting to a great relationship with the people I worked for.

Some of the more surprising answers I got over the years include “I want you to help make X look good in her new role…”, “I would love to see  you made a greater effort to join our corporate events”, “I will get you fired if you submit another travel request for some “phony” conference in Vegas” actual quote – still got to go to Vegas so.

Yahoo! Search Team Off-site

I know that most of you probably have scheduled review meetings with your managers, but these more often then not coincide with bonus reviews and career development talks – and whilst all of these are good tools – in moderation one might want to add, these kind of talks are way too official to get real questions answered.

Go ahead and try it yourself. You will experience first hand how powerful this question is. “Hey XXX, what do you really want me to do?” 

this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype

Bite Size Life Hacks: Episode 1 – “Hey Boss, what do you really want me to do?”

In part two of the perfect Reddit post experiment,  all that is changing for now is the format. I’ve taken all the data from the earlier post and generated a more shareable version.

Further I’ve lightened the data up with rage comic characters and Memes where possible, as to suit the target audience as well as to educate about the way redditors use images to express themselves. There will be at least one more “recycling” before the end of the experiment.

this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype

Part two of the perfect Reddit post experiment – the slides

First off, I’m very excited for Yahoo! and even more so for the Yahoos, especially the ones I know from back in the days when I was still working there. Taking in the news about the new CEO has to be the sweetest thing, coming from headquarters, since before the Microsoft takeover bid.

They so deserve it – just as much as Yahoo! as a whole deserves to get a “second chance”. And strangely enough this landmark hire, by the board, that got so much blame and was “forced” to change, seems to have achieved just that. Over night Yahoo! is an exciting place to work again – I’m not saying, that an audience of 700 million people a month is not exciting as is.

Marissa Mayer CEO Yahoo! Inc

But now, even the future seems bright. Looking back, you could almost say, it seems like destiny now, that we had to go through the Scott Thompson SNAFU, to realize that bullying is not what Yahoo! stands for – even if it could have made them more successful profitable eventually. Regarding Ross Levinsohn, I couldn’t help but feel that, while he seems to be excellent at what he does – selling. A world class salesman was not what Yahoo! would need right now.

This goes both ways – internally, as there is quite a need to break up old silos, and get almost silly things, like a consistent navigation across all products sorted. Even more important is the outside effect of this hire. Marissa seems to be extremely well connected, in the Valley as well as in Washington. She is perceived as someone who has a very keen understanding of user-needs and online product design, which is where you should put your money if you want to get this company turned around.

Ludwig Erhard former German Chancellor

“50% of business is psychology”, is a famous quote of former German chancellor Ludwig Erhard.

And I think it is very much a truth for Yahoo!. Yahoo! has never been as “bad” as people were made to believe.

There is one big IF standing in the way to make this a fairytale wedding so. And that is the “well that’s just how it is done” disease. It’s deeply ingrained into the inner workings of not just Yahoo! or Microsoft, but many companies in the new ecomomy. This still relatively new industry, has produced companies, that have grown to a size that allow for this kind of mindset to develop and infect the whole organization. In a fast changing world, like the online industry, this is a very dangerous development.

Google is fighting this as hard as they can, so Marissa is well aware of the issue. Because even whilst you are a running a big company, you have to be nimble and almost act start-up like just as well, to keep up with the pace of the world around you. And I’m not saying that nobody at Yahoo! saw that before, the infamous Brickhouse, a start-up like environment set up by Yahoo! back in 2006 is testament for that.

I’m hopeful that Mrs. Mayer will see this through as this is the make or break of this chapter at Yahoo! – but given that this is her Big chance we can be certain she will be at her best.

I’m really excited to see what the future will bring for Yahoo!  Hope they can yodel much louder and more cheerful in the future.

this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype

Can Marissa Mayer cure the disease that is killing Yahoo!?

Recently did some research for a client and wanted to share parts of that with you. Obviously there is no perfect Reddit post or even a perfect strategy how to get the visibility you look for.

So lets first find out what month to choose – looks like June is our best bet…ok tbh this is a little silly but its in the data so why not show it anyway.

Frequency of Posts per Month of 10K top posts on Reddit

Next lets look at what day of the week we should post our soon to be world-changing viral campaign. Looks like Thursday but more importantly we should try and avoid the weekend. Not a big surprise but lets carry on.

Frequency of Posts per Weekday of 10K top posts on Reddit

Now lets see if there is a ideal time of the day to post on reddit. The Chart shows the time of the post in UST so you will have to adjust to match your local time. But in UST the perfect time is 4pm.

Top 10k posts on Reddit distribution per hour of day UST

Now lets see which subcategory/subreddit to post to to optimize our chances. Funny enough Funny is the leader here with 16.4% of all top posts made.

Top Subreddit in % of 10.000 most popular posts

Now lets see which platform to use to host the content on – to maximize our chances. The far out winner is imgur.com with 6884 of the 10.000 posts placed there.

Frequency of Destination of 10K top posts on Reddit

So here it goes: Based on the 10.000 most popular posts on Reddit the ideal post would be an image hosted on imgur.com posted in the funny subreddit at 4 pm UST on a Thursday in June.

You have realized by now that I’m not entirely serious about this post and the findings, as obviously one can’t just follow this and be successful, but as said maybe it can be useful to you to some degree.

I’ve uploaded the data in case someone wants to play with it.

There is more to this so – be sure to stay for the bonus round

this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype

The Perfect Reddit Post

You will have read the news that Google started a world wide campaign to inspire countries to legalize same sex partnership rights.

The Huffington Post writes “Google launched a new campaign on Saturday supporting the legalization of same-sex marriage around the world. …the initiative, called “Legalize Love,” debuted in Poland and Singapore, and, “will focus on places with homophobic cultures, where anti-gay laws exist,” though it will operate in every city in which Google has an office.”

And that is a great cause and a thing they should be applauded for. However don’t mistake this as an act of kindness or a move of a company that wants to right a wrong. As at it’s core this is a human resource driven initiative.

Google Doodle Valentines Day 2012

Google as well as other companies that are in a “war” for talent, have a hard time to fill the empty seats as it is already. But if you have to rule out any gay contender for the job as he/she will never move to your companies city or state because of the LGBT rights situation there – that has a negative impact on Google’s or any other company’s ability to compete and win.

Microsoft’s help to “push” Washington to Legalize Gay Marriage including six figure donations from Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were surely more about enabling Microsoft to hire and retain gay employees than about the “Legalization of Love”

this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype

Google is “Legalizing Love” now – and here is why

I’ve been to many conferences in the past several years. And one little trick that I adopted significantly increased the value I get from my time there.

I’ve made it a habit to bring one of these with me – a PowerSquid. Anyone who has ever been to a big conference knows two things are certain. Wi-Fi will suck and there are too few power outlets.

Power Squid

So in a market of high demand this thing turns into the best conversation starter there is. I’ve met a lot of people only because of this and the best thing about it is that “allowing” someone to plug him/herself in you have done them a favor which means they kinda owe you

this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype

Want to get the most out of a conference – bring a squid!

Due to the recent news about LinkedIn usernames and passwords being leaked to the public and apparently already used to annoy people with phishing mails, I thought I’d share my personal approach to keeping my identity save.

The way I manage all my online accounts without having to memorize 100 passwords works by using a dedicated mail address for each and everyone of the sites. Sounds crazy complicated – doesn’t it?

It’s not – as long as you own a domain and your provider supports the catch-all setting for e-mail accounts. What catch-all does is it forwards every message that is adressed to any combination of words & numbers followed by @yourdomain.com to a single mail account you specify.

Once you have this set up – you can sign up at any website with a dedicated address. I structure mine something along the lines of [pet name][#+!][name of service]@yourdomain.com where [pet name][#+!] never changes.

So when I hear about a leak like the recent one – I don’t have to go and change my passwords on many many sites. All I did was change the mail address associated with the service.

this is a blog post as originally posted on locallytype

Life Hack: Easy way to protect your online identity – or why the LinkedIn leak didn’t worry me (much)