Ultimate Top Marketing Pipes

Lots of Trends, But the Direction is Mobile

Mon, 28 May 2012 05:45:00 +0000

In the marketing world, we love trends. We use them to help us spot and understand what is happening in our marketplaces and what is shifting in the worlds of our customers. They can also be used to help us identify where we have gaps in our customer engagement strategy or where a competitive advantage is opening up.

But so often we focus only on the trend and miss the greater underlying movement that is taking place.

Take a look at this presentation from Edelman Digital. The focus is on trends across Asia Pacific – but the reality of this is, that the same can be easily applied to any country. We are, after all, globally connected. And when I say “we”, I mean “consumers”.

Edelman Digital APAC 2012 Trends

View more presentations from Edelman Digital APAC

As the presentation points out, trends like “touch (see) and go” and “convergence emergence” are not just on the horizon – they are happening and visible in our marketplace now. And tying this to the Edelman Trust Barometer – a measure of the trustworthiness of our institutions – shows precisely why social networks and dominating the thinking of so many business executives.

But for my money, it’s not the trends that are important for us all to consider. It’s the direction. The report touches on this under “Trend 8: Device Freedom” – but reading between the lines, it’s clear that there is a substantial shift in consumer behaviour underway. And it will impact every angle, every industry, every message and every business – whether we like it or not. It’s the ever increasing ubiquity of the mobile phone (particularly the smart phone). It’s already changing the way we shop and the way we work, but it’s going to go further than most businesses are ready for.

Those that prepare and move earlier will be well placed to guide the customer experience and transform the notion of trust that is at the heart of our often fragile sense of brand loyalty. Those that fail to move may find that they fail in more ways than one. It’s taken well over 10 years to get to the year of the mobile, but the trending time is over – the direction is clear and it’s in the palm of your hand.

Five Must-Read Posts from Last Week

Sun, 27 May 2012 22:50:10 +0000

I was out most of last week with a bad, bad cold. It seems it’s going around (ie the really viral). But I was still able to find a few gems to read in between heavy nanna naps.

Some snappy writing and a barb in the tail of Jim Parker’s writing. He explains why journalists fear academics and shines a light on the process of opinion making and influence wielding in the Australian media. You’ll love it.
Greg Verdino takes us behind the scenes with the American Express OPEN Forum and shares the four principles that keep it fresh and focused.
Is branding something that only your customers experience? What if you treated your employees first? In Let’s Go to Work, Katie Chatfield talks about what this might mean.
Despite our interest in authenticity, it can be hard to live by. Mark Schaefer shares a recent conference experience and explains why.
Is Facebook the New Big Mac? Tim Longhurst casts an accusatory eye across the over-hyped Facebook IPO to tease out the sense, if not the dollars, underlying the valuation and market expectation.

Oh and if you are looking for one more, here’s my post on the future of work and the need to think like a teenager.

50 top entrepreneurial blogs for your reader

Sun, 27 May 2012 20:02:29 +0000

Every year the team at Evan Carmichael round up some of the best blogs out there and put together a top 50 list. This year’s list for the 50 best blogs for entrepreneurs is a doozy.

Here in the States, we have a long weekend for Memorial Day…so why not use a little of that extra time and load up your RSS feed reader with some of this great content? I’m excited to be on the list again this year and discovered several new blogs that are now on my radar.

It’s quite a wide array of blog topics — from gift cards to marketing with some strategy and law stuff to boot.

You’ll be glad you checked these out…

TopRank

http://www.toprankblog.com - TopRank Online Marketing is a digital marketing agency founded by Lee Odden and Susan Misukanis that helps companies increase sales, brand visibility online and develop better customer engagement. We specialize in content based customer acquisition and relationship programs that emphasize social media marketing, search engine optimization and email marketing.

Small Business Trends

http://smallbiztrends.com - Small Business Trends was founded in 2003 by Anita Campbell, in Cleveland, Ohio. Small Business Trends is the premier source of information, news and advice covering issues of key importance to the small business market. Small Business Trends appears repeatedly at the top of lists of small business websites.

The Small Business Newswire

http://www.sbwire.com - SBWire is an online newswire specializing in the needs of small to medium-sized businesses. Thousands of businesses and organizations in over 150 different countries rely on SBWire for commercial news distribution, media contact management, online news room hosting and other public relations related tools and services.

KISSmetrics Marketing Blog

http://blog.kissmetrics.com - KISSmetrics is different from other analytics platforms due to a combination of three key features. We focus on funnels and conversions and make them easy to track and interpret, use people as the basic unit of measure, and support custom tracking. KISSmetrics is run by a team of designers, developers and entrepreneurs that are passionate about helping online businesses measure, grow and monetize.

Thirty Six Months

http://www.thirtysixmonths.com - Marissa – recent grad who has credit card debt. and student loans. Unfortunately, I learned my money lessons a bit later on in life. Even though I worked all through university and grad school, I also spent a great deal of it, foolishly. This blog will document my efforts to have a positive networth and pay off my debt as soon as possible. There might also be stories of my life and other goals in here as well.

I heard somewhere that it is advisable to be able to pay off all of your consumer debt within THIRTY SIX MONTHS, otherwise debt fatigue sets in. My goal to do it way before that.

The College Investor

http://thecollegeinvestor.com - Robert – I’m a recent MBA graduate who has always had a passion for investing and personal finance. I’m not uber rich, I don’t run a hedge fund (yet!), and I’m not a millionaire. What I do have is a beautiful wife, a loving family, great friends, and a passion for helping others with their personal finance.

Brian Solis

http://www.briansolis.com - Brian Solis is principal at Altimeter Group, a research-based advisory firm. Solis is globally recognized as one of the most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media. A digital analyst, sociologist, and futurist, Solis has studied and influenced the effects of emerging media on business, marketing, publishing, and culture.

Coyote Blog

http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/ - Coyote Blog is the work of Warren Meyer, a small business owner in Phoenix, Arizona. The name Coyote Blog came from two sources. First, it’s a reference to my adopted home of Arizona. Second, it’s a salute to my favorite all time cartoon character Wile E. Coyote, and, of course, that most famous of small businesses: ACME. The original mission was to cover some of the day-to-day travails and lessons learned in running a small business.

DollarVersity

http://www.dollarversity.com - This blog is a service provided by GreenBridge Advisors, an accounting and consulting firm located in Coral Springs, Florida. Taking that fact into consideration, you can expect to find articles on topics such as taxes, entrepreneurship, credit, debt management, personal and business finances, and a variety of other financial and business related issues. More than that, the blog’s goal is to inform, teach, and hopefully entertain you as well.

Faith And Finance

http://www.faithandfinance.org - Faith and Finance was founded by Tim in 2010. Tim is a Christian, husband, MBA grad, and entrepreneur. After competing a full-time MBA in less than one year (crazy? yes) he and a fellow MBA grad started a marketing firm designed to help small businesses with their online presence. You’ll find his approach to personal finance to be straight forward and practical. His love for learning and teaching others is what drives him to write such interesting articles and eBooks.

Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/blog - John Jantsch has been called the World’s Most Practical Small Business Expert for consistently delivering real-world, proven small business marketing ideas and strategies. John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, award winning social media publisher and best selling author Duct Tape Marketing and The Referral Engine .

Caribbean Media Vision

http://cmvlive.com - Caribbean Media Vision is a contemporary graphic & website design studio located in St. Kitts. We here at CMV Specializes in helping companies to make their presence online and in the media by utilizing technology. Encompassing services that are geared towards giving companies a solid and comprehensive Internet presence, as well as services aimed at making the presentation of information much more professional and insightful, allowing companies to leverage competitive advantage off of the end results.

Inkling Media

http://inklingmedia.net/ - Inkling Media is an inbound marketing shop based in Lancaster, PA with an emphasis on social media. We provide consultation on utilizing social media as part of an overall marketing strategy. In addition to Social Media, we work with you to help implement a strong blogging plan, as well as organic search engine optimization.

Accounting and Small Business /Beverly Shares

http://www.bjconquest.com - Beverly J Conquest, Owner and CEO Accounting and Small Business, LLC — Knowledge + Expertise + Experience = Solutions. Over 20 years experience providing accounting solutions for established and startup businesses.

Living Locurto

http://www.livinglocurto.com/ - Living Locurto is published by Amy Locurto, a designer, stylist and mom of two from Dallas, Texas. What started in July 2008 as a blog about creative things I did at home with my children, Living Locurto has since turned into a top craft and party blog with great resource for moms.

CloudTweaks

http://www.cloudtweaks.com - With a team of content creators from around the globe, including CTOs, CEOs, CIOs, cloud bloggers, engineers and technology enthusiasts, delivers in‐depth articles, the latest news, interviews and other valuable content on cloud computing to a growing audience of technology professionals, including representatives government agencies, financial institutions, technology firms and Fortune 500 organizations.

Litigation and Trial

http://www.litigationandtrial.com - Maxwell S. Kennerly - I’m a trial lawyer for injured people and businesses at The Beasley Firm. Founded in 1958, we have recovered over $2 billion for our clients through hundreds of verdicts and settlements in excess of $1 million.

Sramana Mitra on Strategy

http://www.sramanamitra.com - Sramana Mitra has been an entrepreneur and a strategy consultant in Silicon Valley since 1994. Her fields of experience span from hard core technology disciplines like semiconductors to sophisticated consumer marketing industries including fashion and education.

E-junkie Blog

http://www.e-junkie.info - Since E-junkie’s inception, our mission has been to lower the barriers to online selling. As E-commerce has grown more diverse and competitive, it occurred to us that merely providing good technology, such as our copy-paste E-junkie shopping cart, along with good customer service and tech support aren’t by themselves sufficient to meet our mission fully. We started this blog to provide such information to anyone who is selling online or has ever considered doing so.

Intuit Small Business Blog

http://blog.intuit.com - This blog is dedicated to a discussion of small business, including advice, resources, and insights we think will help you be more successful . We’ll talk about broad topics of lasting interest to small business owners, such as Money, Customers, and Employees. We’ll also share information on current Trends as well as stories about Local businesses. Authors include professional journalists, people who work at Intuit, our customers and research partners, and guest experts we invite to share their perspectives.

Marketing Trenches

http://www.marketingtrenches.com - The Marketing Trenches Blog is designed to provide marketers and business executives concrete examples of successful marketing strategies and tactics. The content is largely focused on internet marketing, but given that internet marketing should be integrated with traditional/offline marketing, the content is relevant for all marketers.

Inventor Spot

http://inventorspot.com - InventorSpot.com is a fun and informative website focused on Inventions, Innovations and Interesting Ideas from around the world. We offer serious fun for the inventor in all of us. We believe we are the most popular and most referenced invention related website on the internet. We also support the largest community of independent inventors in the United States.

Jim’s Marketing Blog

http://jimsmarketingblog.com - Jim Connolly – worked in marketing for 25 years, with my own successful marketing business since 1995. I specialise in helping small and medium sized businesses to make massively more sales and boost their profits. I achieve this by sharing my most effective marketing strategies with them and then coaching them on exactly what they need to do, to achieve ongoing, amazing results.

Smedio

http://smedio.com - Founded in January 2010, Smedio is the new media and social web guide for businesses and marketers. Our aim is to continuously define the business value of new media and the social web by equiping you with the needed insight and innovative ideas to help your business grow even more, using technology, new media, and the social web by bringing you useful breaking news, latest trends and techniques that you can use immediately.

Rewards Cards Canada

http://www.rewardscardscanada.com - Your complete source for finding and using the best rewards cards in Canada. Rewards cards can be a great way to supplement your everyday spending and help you save for amazing products and experiences. Here you will find detailed reviews of every major rewards card in the country, including the major credit cards that offer rewards points.

Crafty Raffle

http://www.craftyraffle.net - I started this site because I have serious craft envy. I love handmade stuff. Love it. It is a minor joke in my family that half my gifts for anyone are bought on Etsy (it’s not untrue). I used to make quilts as wedding presents before I was overrun by children, and I’m a photographer, so I am capable of pursuing creative outlets, but sometimes my efforts fall flat, and sometimes I don’t know where to start. I also love entering giveaways.

Drew’s Marketing Minute

http://www.drewsmarketingminute.com/ - Drew McLellan - a 25+ year marketing agency veteran who lives for creating “a ha” moments for his clients, clients’ customers, peers and audiences across the land. His blog is written in a pragmatic, “how to” focus. He wants his readers to be able to learn, dicuss, challenge and implement the ideas they get from reading his content.

Recently he has appeared in the New York Times, Entrepreneur Magazine, Business Week and Fortune’s Small Business. The Wall Street Journal calls him one of 10 bloggers that every entrepreneur should read.

Under30CEO

http://under30ceo.com - Under30CEO is the leading media site covering news, advice, trends & events for the young entrepreneur. Under30CEO is dedicated to everything relevant to a young person starting a business or anyone looking to learn more about the space. Now, nearly 1000 small business articles and over a million readers later, Under30CEO has developed into a thriving community for young entrepreneurs. Under30CEO is based in New York City.

Roundpeg

http://www.roundpeg.biz - A full service marketing firm, serving the Indianapolis small business community, we create websites, press releases, newsletters and brochures to help you launch your ideas and most importantly, close sales!

Content Marketing Today

http://contentmarketingtoday.com - By creating conversations with your customers we build your brand and your bottom-line. We bring more than 25 years of successful business experience to our content marketing strategist role.

Diversity

http://diversity.net.nz - Ben Kepes is an analyst, an entrepreneur, a commentator and a business adviser. His business interests include a diverse range of industries from manufacturing to property to technology. As a technology commentator he has a broad presence both in the traditional media and extensively online. Ben covers the convergence of technology, mobile, ubiquity and agility, all enabled by the Cloud.

I of the Consumer

http://www.zachhellermarketing.com - Zach Heller – My goal is to create a place of open communication about marketing, advertising, small business, etc. I invite comments, emails, and connections of any kind.

Point Blank SEO

http://www.pointblankseo.com - Jon Cooper - Here you’ll find all the information you need to start building high quality, white hat links in order to move up in the SERPs. This blog helps all link builders, both beginners and experts, in learning how to build quality links in a productive & time efficient manner.

Young Entrepreneur Blog

http://www.youngentrepreneur.com/blog - YoungEntrepreneur.com was launched in 1999 and has grown to become one of the largest online forum communities for entrepreneurs worldwide. YoungEntrepreneur.com has become a “must visit” resource for start-up CEOs, founders, aspiring entrepreneurs, mentors and investors worldwide, reaching an audience that very few can match.

Indie Fixx

http://indiefixx.com - Indie Fixx is a lifestyle blog with a very healthy mix of indie design love, crafting and diy, some gardening and cooking mixed in with plenty of commentary and a healthy dose of joie de vivre. Indie Fixx had its roots as just an indie design blog, but has morphed into more than just a review of independent art & design. Plenty of that still goes on, but man can’t live on design alone (although one can try) and so the focus has shifted to include more aspects of living a well-rounded life—cooking, eating, creating, gardening, playing, loving, discovering, learning, meeting, sharing & more.

Vandelay Design Blog

http://vandelaydesign.com/blog - Vandelay Website Design exists to help businesses and organizations build a stronger presence online. By working directly with our clients to identify and address areas of need we are able to provide a customized experience and an end product that will produce results and lead to increased profitability.

ConverStations

http://www.converstations.com/ - Mike Sansone is an independent business consultant specializing in teaching professionals in various fields about using their voice (in-person or digitally) in ways to better reach their audiences. His experience in public speaking, sales and marketing, writing, and real-time online communication are strengths Mike relies upon in his role as a Conversation Conductor.

Rex Hammock’s RexBlog.com

http://www.rexblog.com - The blog of Rex Hammock, founder/ceo of Hammock Inc., the content marketing, strategy and media company founded in 1991 in Nashville, Tenn. Rex is also founder/helper-in-chief of the wiki, SmallBusiness.com.

Jeff Korhan

http://www.jeffkorhan.com - Jeff Korhan is an authentic, informative, and inspiring speaker who helps mainstream small businesses use social media and Internet marketing to increase their influence, enhance customer relationships, and accelerate growth. After 20 successful years he sold his business, and now applies three decades of marketing experience to helping clients develop sustainable marketing practices that capitalize on emerging business trends.

Business Pundit

http://BusinessPundit.com - Drea Knufken - one of the writers at BusinessPundit.com. Before joining Business Pundit, I worked in a variety of business and content production positions. Most recently, I was a travel writer. My book, “The Backroads and Byways of Colorado,” covers the best road trips in the state, mile-by-mile. Before that, I helped create two major websites for the Los Angeles tourism bureau, worked for Google (specifically, AdWords and Blogger.com) for three years, and worked for several technology startups in Silicon Valley at the tail end of the .com boom.

Aweber Blog

http://www.aweber.com/blog - Founded in 1998, we create email marketing software to help small businesses automate email follow up and email newsletter delivery. Our growing team shares a wealth of experience and knowledge about permission-based email marketing services with over 102,000+ current clients we work with daily.

Live and Love…Out Loud

http://liveandloveoutloud.com - Kristin O’hea- Encouraging, empowering and celebrating the everyday woman is what this here blog is all about. I’m living it up, loving out loud and laughing it off as I navigate my way through the challenges and triumphs of motherhood. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll realize that you’re not alone.

Understanding Marketing

http://www.understandingmarketing.com - The majority of small businesses realize the importance of marketing and PR in today’s ultra-competitive environment. They know the key to success is driving awareness and engaging with their customers in a way that enhances their brand. But they also know that margins can be razor thin and they typically don’t have the budget to hire an expensive marketing/PR agency to create exciting campaigns that increase the bottom line

Ohio Environmental Law Blog

http://www.ohioenvironmentallawblog.com - Joe Koncelik is an attorney with the law firm of Frantz Ward LLP which is based in Cleveland, Ohio. The focus of Joe’s practice is in all facets of environmental law as well providing counsel on issues relating to renewable energy and climate change. Joe has also fulfilled U.S. Green Builders Council’s requirements to qualify as a LEED™ (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Accredited Professional.

SeanDaniel.com

http://sbs.seandaniel.com - Technology Tips, Tricks & News – featuring WHS, SBS and other Microsoft and Related Technology.

Simply Business

http://www.simplybusiness.co.uk/knowledge/ - The Simply Business team offers a range of business expertise which we are keen to share through articles, downloads, guides, news and more.
We can also answer questions about business insurance.

Small Business Mavericks

http://www.smallbusinessmavericks.com/internetmarketing - Founded by Caroline Melberg & Steve Melberg. Small Business Mavericks offers Website Marketing and Social Media Strategy for small and mid-size businesses.

Business901

http://business901.com/ - Joe Dager is president of Business901, a firm specializing in bringing the continuous improvement process to the sales and marketing arena. He takes his process thinking of over thirty years in marketing within a wide variety of industries and applies it through Lean Marketing Concepts.

Apptivo

http://runapptivo.apptivo.com/small-business-university - Apptivo’s platform is a collection of 40+ cloud based Business Apps. All the generic Business Apps are free and have absolutely no limits on usage. All the Apps communicate with each other and share the data so Apptivo users never have to worry about syncing or duplicating the data manually.

Mind Your Business

http://blog.bizelo.us/ - Bizelo’s small business apps (“mini-apps”) are web-based applications that work simply, and simply work!

Emergency room doctors

Seth Godin — Sun, 27 May 2012 09:37:00 +0000

It's a mindset, not just a job.

You can pitch them as hard as you like about having them work to persuade their patients to give up smoking (after all, it saves lives in the long run), but I think you'll find that they're a lot more interested in stopping the bleeding.

We need emergency room doctors, no doubt. I just wonder if we have too many of them in your organization. If all we do is reward fast first aid in what people do at work, is it any wonder we don't have enough attention to the strategy and choices that would eliminate the need for all that running around in the first place?

It helps to know how prevalent the "emergency room" culture is before you start training your people on a new long-term strategy.

This is (still) broken

Seth Godin — Sat, 26 May 2012 20:50:58 +0000

Two things worth a design rant, as well as a book and a free video talk...

I apologize if you see the world with more frustration after this.

Rethinking Resource Sharing

Sat, 26 May 2012 14:00:00 +0000

While recently explaining Why and How I use Twitter, an idea struck me that I haven’t been able to get rid of: How can I Be the Resource and still maintain some ownership while also having quick access to the links I share.

Then two recent posts from Seth Godin stayed at me.

Ranking for signal to noise ratio, specifically this bit:

The clickthrough rates on tweets is getting closer and closer to zero. Not because there aren’t links worth clicking on, but because there’s so much junk you don’t have the attention or time to sort it all out.

This past week, I share a few fantastic resources I had share weeks before. The clicks and favorites and likes were as numerous – and sometimes higher – than when I previously shared them. The streams and lists on Twitter have become very crowded.

What are you leaving behind and this question:

All day long you’re emailing or tweeting or liking or meeting… and every once in a while, something tangible is produced. But is there a mark of your passage?

Maybe the example of swissmiss is a model to follow. Still be a great resource, yet continue to own the space you share from.

And you can still tweet about the resource, but maybe from your own space.

Still thinkin’ ….

Rethinking Resource Sharing is a post from: ConverStations

Weekend Favs May Twenty Six

Sat, 26 May 2012 12:39:18 +0000

My weekend blog post routine includes posting links to a handful of tools or great content I ran across during the week.

I don’t go into depth about the finds, but encourage you check them out if they sound interesting. The photo in the post is a favorite for the week from Flickr or one that I took out there on the road.

Image sjdunphy via Flckr CC

Good stuff I found this week:

Scripted – A marketplace for writers where you can get blog posts, articles and press releases written on an ongoing monthly basis.

Ziptask – very interesting new outsourcing model – you submit a project, get an estimate, get the work done, approve it and move on. It’s all anonymous and managed for you.

Seek or Shout – the new online community for media and PR professionals

Weekend Favs May Twenty Six is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Timing - The Most Creative Lunch In History

Rohit — Sat, 26 May 2012 12:00:00 +0000

NOTE: This is an excerpt from Chapter 8 of my new book Likeonomics all about Timing, the 2nd principle of Likeonomics. I hope you enjoy it!

In 1855, a Scottish clergyman named James Gall had an idea that should have changed every map ever created, but didn’t. It was four years before Charles Darwin would publish his Origin of Species, and Gall was presenting his world-changing idea at a Glasgow meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. The world he lived in had long since evolved from the point where people thought Earth was flat.

The most commonly used map of the time was known as the Mercator map and was originally developed to help sailors to navigate the ocean and reach their destinations. It had been used for hundreds of years. There was only one problem . . . it was wrong. In taking a spherical globe and projecting it onto a flat piece of paper, the sizes of the landmasses were distorted. Greenland, for example, looked huge while Africa appeared much smaller. In reality, Africa’s landmass was nearly 13 times the size of Greenland:

Gall’s theory corrected this ‘‘projection problem’’ and adjusted the size of the landmasses—but it was too radical for his time. He and his map were widely ignored, and would be forgotten over the next thirty years. Then, in 1885, the first inaugural issue of The Scottish Geographical Magazine was set to be published. Resolved to give it one more try, Gall named his theory the ‘‘Gall Orthographic Projection’’ and wrote an article about it for the magazine (see Figure 8.1). When published, it unfortunately met with the same fate as before and was quickly dismissed.

What did a reverend from Scotland know of cartography anyway? Time and history would forget Gall and his map projection again—this time for nearly 100 years, until something interesting happened in 1974.

That year, a German historian named Arno Peters proposed an almost identical idea that he had developed independently without knowing of Gall’s work. His projected map, though, appeared to be nearly the same as Gall’s, and was based on similar calculations of longitude and latitude. Peters’ map (which he called the ‘‘Peters projection map’’) was introduced at a much different time in history.

In 1974, the world was consumed by the promise of racial and political equality. People had lived through two world wars, numerous revolutions, and race and gender rights were hot topics. The Peters projection map was seen to offer a symbol of hope and redemption for cultures around the world that had been colonized by Western nations

It became a symbol of the skewed worldview that many Western countries still held toward the rest of the developing world. It even found some advocates in the Western world itself. Over the next decade and a half, controversy and intense debate followed the map everywhere. The former Chancellor of West Germany

Willy Brandt used the map as a symbol of the equality of nations. The map was circulated among regional offices of the United Nations and other global organizations to be displayed on the wall. Gall’s original map idea, meanwhile, had resurfaced thanks to his published article, and cartographers started referring to the new combined map as the ‘‘Gall-Peters Projection map’’—the name it is known by today.

Despite the controversy and political pressure keeping it from widespread adoption, the map has never really died. Over the three decades since it was introduced, the map has been featured in the American serial drama The West Wing and often used by military strategist Thomas Barnett on C-SPAN. In 1990 it even led a group of the most respected geographic organizations in the world to issue a recommendation to ‘‘strongly urge book and map publishers, the media and government agencies to cease using rectangular world maps for general purposes or artistic displays.’’

Today, while the Peters projection map is not considered the standard, it has been credited by academic and creator of The History of Cartography Project J. Brian Hartley with sparking the global debate around the political implications of maps and cartography. Gall, meanwhile, is only remembered ceremoniously in the merged name of the map. Why did two men with almost identical ideas have such differing levels of success when introducing their respective ideas to the world?

The reason Peters was able to succeed at getting worldwide recognition and inspire an international debate while Gall was largely forgotten is all about the importance of timing, and it explains a lot more than just the history of cartography.

The Most Creative Lunch in History

In the fall of 1994, Microsoft was moments away from buying Pixar. Yes, you read that right. It was a year before the first Toy Story movie was released, and Pixar was bleeding money. Toy Story was running $6 million over budget and Steve Jobs had already put nearly $50 million of his own money into Pixar. It seemed like a lost cause. Desperate to salvage any part of his investment, Jobs had told his team to speak with any interested buyers.

Nathan Myhrvold was interested. As Microsoft’s technology evangelist, his job was to seek out new and promising technology. Pixar had something that easily fit the bill. In order to create the complex graphics required for their upcoming film, they had built an extremely advanced 3D graphic design software called PhotoRealistic RenderMan, or PRMan for short. PRMan was the perfect software to help Windows programs power higher end graphics, andMyhrvold was ready to sign a deal. As the Pixar team prepared for the meeting, they pulled together one of the first completed scenes from the yet-to-be-completed Toy Story film to share with Myhrvold as well. The scene was the march of the green army men and their rope drop from the second floor. The plan was to use this sneak peek as a chance to try and get Myhrvold interested in buying the studio arm of Pixar as well as the PRMan software. Unfortunately, he didn’t bite.

Filmmaking wasn’t really Microsoft’s core business. He just wanted PRMan. It was Jobs, however, who would pull back from the negotiations abruptly and decide not to sell anything. As Pixar employee Pam Kerwin would later recall, ‘‘Steve kind of jerked back because, I think,there was something visceral in him that said, ‘This is going to be really stupendous.’’’1

It turned out his instincts were right and Pixar would go on to become the most successful animated film company in history. What Jobs didn’t know was just a few months earlier, to plan for the future, the Pixar animation team had what may have been the most creative lunch in history.

Their animators were putting the finishing touches on Toy Story, and a small group including director John Lassiter and other creative team members were gathering to talk about what should come next. During that lunch, they came up with a list of new movie concepts that would eventually inspire three more blockbuster Pixar films: A Bug’s Life, Monsters Inc., and WALL-E. Together, these films would gross $2.2 billion at the box office and be nominated for 15 Academy Awards. The story of the near death and meteoric rise of Pixar is a favorite of mine for several reasons. It includes everything from the triumph of creativity to the birth of an entire industry of computer-generated animation that would lead to some of the most entertaining films of the past two decades.

More than anything else, though, these stories always of the power of having the right timing. The inspiration for 10 years of filmmaking happened over a lunch meeting. The fleeting moment when a critical piece of Pixar was almost sold to Microsoft was also all about the pivotal timingof deciding to stay the course or sell the company.

Everything from finding the love of your life to launching the next world-changing startup comes down to having the right timing. Timing really is everything.

This excerpt is from Chapter 8 of Likeonomics, all about Timing - the fifth of the TRUST principle that I lay out in the book. For a longer excerpt, please visit the book website at www.likeonomics.com/excerpt - and if you enjoyed the reading this, please consider buying Likeonomics today!

What are you leaving behind?

Seth Godin — Sat, 26 May 2012 09:34:00 +0000

I love watching contrails, those streams of white frozen exhaust that jets leave behind. It's a temporary track in the sand, and then the sun melts them and they're gone.

Go to Montana and you might see the tracks dinosaurs left a bazillion years ago. Same sort of travel, very different half-life of their passage.

All day long you're emailing or tweeting or liking or meeting... and every once in a while, something tangible is produced. But is there a mark of your passage? Fifty years later, we might hear a demo tape or an outtake of something a musician scratched together while making an album. Often, though, there's no trace.

I'm fascinated by blogs like this one, which are basically public notes and coffee breaks by a brilliant designer in between her 'real' work. Unlike tweets, which vanish, Tina's posts are here for a long time and much easier to share and bookmark. Her trail becomes useful not just to her, but to everyone who is interested.

What would happen if you took ten minutes of coffeebreak downtime every day and produced an online artifact instead? What if your collected thoughts about your industry became an ebook or a series of useful instructions or pages or videos?

What if we all did that?

Simplicity: Plain Language & The Red Button That Reinvented Your Memories

Rohit — Fri, 25 May 2012 23:54:54 +0000

NOTE: This is an excerpt from Chapter 7 of my new book Likeonomics all about Simplicity, the 4th principle of Likeonomics. I hope you enjoy it!

Annetta Cheek is a 25-year veteran of the federal government who now runs a nonprofit called the Center for Plain Language. There has never been a more important time for the Center to exist. ‘‘When you’re supposed to be a democracy, and people don’t even understand what government is doing, that’s a problem,’’ Cheek says. This is not just an American problem either.

All across the world, people are wasting countless hours dealing with bureaucracy and complexity on every level. In 2010, the Hong Kong–based group Political and Economic Risk Consultancy surveyed more than 1,300 business executives in 12 Asian countries. In the results, India was named for having a bureaucratic system that was ‘‘one of the most stifling in the world.’’ The report cited a strong correlation between an inefficient bureaucracy and high corruption rates. Sweden, in contrast, enjoys very low corruption and has been credited as being one of the first cultures to recognize the power of natural language. Way back in 1713, King Charles XII of Sweden dictated this ordinance:

His Majesty the King requires that the Royal Chancellery in all written
documents endeavour to write in clear, plain Swedish and not to use, as
far as possible, foreign words.

Today, more than half of all Swedish government authorities are involved in plain language projects. The Swedish government has a linguist in the Cabinet Office, and a division whose responsibility is to review government documents and ensure natural language is used before allowing them to be distributed widely. In other governments across the world, there is a lot of support for the plain language movement, as well.

Recently in the United States, the government passed the Plain Writing Act of 2010, which requires all federal government agencies to use plain language in every covered document and train federal workers on how to use plain language. A year later, when the Center for Plain Language announced the winners of their annual ClearMark award for plain language, the IRS was the unlikely choice as Grand Prize winner.

The Myth of Good Complexity

When it comes to most government organizations, hardly anyone wants more complexity in documents. Typically when you end up with bills featuring thousands of pages of content, it is usually because large armies of people worked on writing them, or because no one took the time to make them succinct and clear.

In other words, the reason for complexity in government typically comes down to either inefficiency or laziness. In business, however, there can be the real possibility that some complexity exists because it is seen to be valuable in some misguided way. Brands launch more product extensions because they think consumers want more choice. Lawyers add 30-page disclaimers and terms and conditions in an effort to shield the company from some unforeseen liability or potential lawsuits. Airlines are notorious for having dozens of different flight ‘‘fare codes’’ so they can offer varying rates to different types of travelers based on when they book and other factors.

Unfortunately I have sat in plenty of meetings with very smart business people who argue passionately to keep the complexity in their business because they believe they need to have it. Here are a few of the arguments they usually use:

Our business is inherently complex.
Our customers are smart and they get it.
We need the complexity in order to make money.
It would be impossible to get the right people to agree to simplify.

No matter how forceful the arguments, ‘‘good complexity’’ in most forms usually turns out to be a myth. There are probably certain situations today where complexity may not be causing any serious problems . . . yet. As the consumer electronics industry has been learning for the past decade, the problem is that just because complexity isn’t killing you right now, that doesn’t mean it never will.

Gadget Confusion

A few months ago, I searched on Amazon to find a new Blu-Ray player and found 335 different models. When I went that same day to check the price of a mobile phone I had seen several months ago, I found that it was no longer offered and there was a brand new, barely distinguishable model available in its place.

If you purchased a digital camera just six months ago, chances are if you walked into an electronics retailer they would no longer offer it for sale.

TVs have become so complicated now that many manufacturers of high-end sets recommend you pay several hundred dollars (on top of buying the TV) for a ‘‘calibration service’’ just to make sure all of the settings are optimized for your TV once you get it home.

This constant complexity leads to gadget confusion, where competing products differ only slightly and consumers end up bewildered and frustrated. In response to the growing epidemic of gadget confusion, some retailers have created full ‘‘Geek Squads’’ of internal technical experts who can make house calls and help to set up or explain technology. In addition, a startup called Decide.com launched in 2011, and has already partnered with Consumer Reports to offer a tool that helps shoppers decide whether they should buy a gadget now or wait until the next upgraded replacement comes out.

One of the most interesting types of products to examine in this evolution of complexity is one that has managed to escape the trend of increasing complexity, and instead, offer products that are getting simpler and simpler: the handheld video camera. When Sony launched the first consumer handheld video camera in the early 1980s, it was so bulky that it was designed to rest on your shoulder in order to be ‘‘portable.’’ The technology quickly evolved, though, and over the next 20 years, Sony and their competitors focused on two big priorities:

Make the video camera smaller.
Keep the recording quality as good as possible.

The products were still generally difficult to use, requiring you to wade through a user manual to learn how to use all the right buttons and features, but it was seen as a necessary evil.

The bigger problem was that consumers were all building up a vast but nearly useless library of video on tapes or data cards. After forcing some immediate family or unfortunate friends to watch those videos right away, they would be stuck on a shelf or in a drawer waiting for the day when you would finally return to edit them. The day usually never came.

Then, in 2007, a single product changed everything.

Flipping the Video Camera Market

A small startup named Pure Digital had first launched a product the year before called the ‘‘Pure Digital Point & Shoot’’ video camcorder, which was exclusively available at CVS pharmacies. It was a one-time use video camera designed to enable you to record video and then bring it back to your local CVS to have it turned into a DVD.

A year later, the camera was relaunched as a permanent camera that most industry analysts thought wouldn’t last a month. The video quality wasn’t great. The price point was less than one-third of other video cameras on the market. Even the design of this little product looked like a toy, with just one simple red button at the back and barely any instructions. It was that easy to use.

As founder Jonathan Kaplan would later explain, ‘‘The really successful [products] are ones people never thought they wanted.’’ And Kaplan’s product did have one killer feature aside from its simplicity of use: a built-in USB plug that would allow users to easily plug the camera directly into their computers in order to upload or edit videos easily using the built-in software. What was their big insight?

The most important thing about video wasn’t the picture quality. It was how simple it was to take and how easily you could share it with the people in your life. Realizing that the product’s name would be a vital component, Pure Digital hired a naming company, which developed hundreds of potential names. The name Kaplan gave to the product, though, was inspired by the keychain to his Audi and how the spring-loaded key would pop out at the touch of a button.

He named the new camera Flip.

This excerpt is from Chapter 7 of Likeonomics, all about Simplicity - the fourth of the TRUST principle that I lay out in the book. For a longer excerpt, please visit the book website at www.likeonomics.com/excerpt - and if you enjoyed the reading this, please consider buying Likeonomics today!

Free Friday: Sharpen Your Set of Social Media Marketing Skills

Fri, 25 May 2012 14:28:26 +0000

Leave the lazy, hazy days of summer to the unambitious. On June 8, attend our free Digital Marketing World: Social Media virtual conference and learn what you need to sharpen your social media marketing skills.

The virtual conference takes place on June 8, from 11 a.m. Eastern time to 3 p.m. And it features three sessions to keep you up to date with the world of social media—all while your competitors snooze in the summer sun.

At 11 a.m., Erik Deckers, co-owner and vice president of Creative Services for Professional Blog Service, will talk about “Using Twitter to Drive Business and Generate Leads.” He also will discuss how to use Twitter to…

Find new business
Keep old business
Know what your competitors are up to

At 1 p.m., Erik Qualman, founder and owner of socialnomics.com, gives you the “5 Keys to Success and Influence in This Digital Decade.” He will discuss…

Three questions companies should ask their employees
Questions companies should ask their clients and customers
Tools for listening to your clients’ customers

And at 2 p.m., Judy Schramm, CEO of ProResource, presents a session that answers the question “Can You Really Generate Leads on LinkedIn?” She also will talk about…

How to find and connect with ideal prospects on LinkedIn
Lead-nurturing strategies to use on LinkedIn
What to outsource to an assistant

Reserve your spot at our virtual conference today. Register for FREE admission to Digital Marketing World: Social Media.

(Photo courtesy of Bigstock: Social Networks)

Why You Hate Being the CEO

Fri, 25 May 2012 12:52:23 +0000

Every business has a CEO, even yours. Now, you may not ever call yourself that, or when you do, it’s only in the theoretical sense, but the fact is, every business has a need for the role of a Chief Executive Officer.

Every business also needs a VP of Marketing, Finance, Operations and all those other boxes you’ll likely find on an org chart.

Kevin Lawver via Flickr

The problem with the very small, even solopreneur, business is that because you’re doing all of these jobs, often concurrently, you don’t tend to departmentalize the various functions as you must.

In many cases, you most relate with the tactical work that seems to consume most of your day. The busy work is where you feel most productive, it’s how you make stuff, sell stuff and ship stuff. I mean, who has time to fantasize about the goofy title of CEO anyway?

And that’s the rationale we use so we don’t have to do the really hard work.

A CEO’s primary function in most organizations is to look beyond today, tomorrow, next month even, and determine the resources, strategies and innovations needed to take the organization to a place of unknown some 12 or 18 months from now.

Some people naturally think this way; most can’t rise up above the noise of the urgent to do so.

Unless and until you force yourself to actually play the role of CEO in your business (even in 15 minute increments) you will constantly find yourself struggling to maintain that which you can effectively keeps your arms wrapped around.

You play the role of CEO – even if you have no one else to manage or account to – by carving out time to think long term, plan long term and measure and correct short term on a consistent basis.

You play the role of CEO by creating an annual growth plan, brining your entire team together for a day each quarter to report and access, holding weekly all hands meetings and even daily fifteen minute check-ins to get a sense of how people are progressing with priorities and projects.

All of the above can be done with an actual team or all by yourself – the point is to wear the CEO hat in this intentional manner, no matter the situation.

This takes the kind of discipline that few have. You have to get good at separating your routine from what needs doing – wear a suit on your CEO days if that helps. Make an org chart with all the boxes and magnets that allow you to move yourself from box to box. Have your printer make business cards for your various roles – do whatever it takes to get yourself into performing the essential roles in your business as though they mattered.

Because, actually being the CEO in your organization may be the most important fifteen minutes you spend each day.

Why You Hate Being the CEO is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

The Positive and Negative Sides of Social Networking [Guest Post]

Fri, 25 May 2012 11:06:14 +0000

by Jessica Thompson of Directly.me

Social networking has become an integral part of our lives and we cannot resist staying away from Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn etc. As the social networking sites grew enormously in popularity a huge number of small and big businesses, celebrities, nonprofit organizations and government departments have got engaged into activities on these portals. The internet storm that originated as fun now plays vital role in influencing behaviors and decisions.

According to a recent survey, American people spend more than 22% of their time in using social networking websites. Although people find these websites essential for retaining ties but there are several negative effects that social networking can have on a society. Let’s look into the both sides!

The ease and simplicity of communication and the spontaneous way of understanding technology where it helps building better relationships with people, customers and business partners also let’s many unnecessary and non productive activities to run on the platform. Some people may call it fun, but excess of fun is also hazardous. It’s great to have people in your network who share interests and hobbies, but spending too much of time on useless conversations is never a good idea.

Many of the businesses are getting benefits from social networks to connect to their clients, costing nothing but time and energy, but at the same time, there’s a huge number of spammers exploiting the resources.

Every good thing if it’s used excessively turns out to have negative effects and so is the case with social networking. With several negativities that social networking can bring, there’s huge benefit for individuals as well as for businesses. Staying away from social networking sites may turn you socially backward, but sticking to the social networks only may outcast you from normal and a healthy life.

Staying moderate is a simple solution to all the problems and so the use of social networks needs moderation too. No social network is bad; it totally depends on how you use it, i.e. it’s up to you, whether you use it for wasting time or generating income. Knowing and using a social network for a specific purpose can help identifying your need and the best solution for it. Facebook is great to stay connected to friends and family, LinkedIn is best for hiring talent and professional networking, Directly.me is the best way to target an audience and make sure that they listen to you and Twitter can be used to instant feedback. Find out what exactly you want to do at a social network and you won’t waste time ever!

The Positive and Negative Sides of Social Networking [Guest Post] is a post from: ConverStations

The tyranny of low price

Seth Godin — Fri, 25 May 2012 09:18:00 +0000

If you build your business around being the lowest-cost provider, that's all you've got. Everything you do has to be a race in that direction, because if you veer toward anything else (service, workforce, impact, design, etc.) then a competitor with a more single-minded focus will sell your commodity cheaper than you.

Cheapest price is the refuge for the marketer with no ideas left or no guts to implement the ideas she has.

Everyone needs to sell at a fair price. But unless you've found a commodity that must remain a commodity, a fair price is not always the lowest price. Not when you understand that price is just one of the many tools available.

A short version of this riff: The low-price leader really doesn't need someone with your skills.

Success has no purpose

Thu, 24 May 2012 19:19:45 +0000

A book/gadget list for late spring

Seth Godin — Thu, 24 May 2012 18:09:00 +0000

I hope you'll find a gem or two.

Here it is.

Five Reasons to Create Online Videos for Your Customers

Thu, 24 May 2012 14:51:35 +0000

A guest post by Jim Dicso of SundaySky.

When consumers shop online, they expect to receive the same personalized attention they get in-store, with engaging experiences throughout their decision-making process. To create those engaging online experiences, innovative marketers are turning to online video.

Interested in maximizing your brand’s success with online video? Here are five thoughts to consider.

1. Search engines favor video and structure their results to reward sites that use it

Consequently, online marketers are investing more to promote their videos. One investment that goes a long way towards attracting higher-quality visitors is making on-site videos scalable. That ensures reach for long-tail keywords, which drive the highest-quality traffic and best conversion rates.

2. Pre-roll ads bring your prospects back

The average consumer interacts with your brand several times before conversion. An effective way to bring site “abandoners” back and recover lost traffic is with retargeted ads designed to re-engage abandoners based on their previous behavior on your website.

New online video technology advances retargeted advertising by presenting abandoners with personalized pre-roll ads based on their shopping history and relevant deals. Retargeted pre-roll ads outperform traditional retargeted banner ads with higher conversion rates and often with above-average order value, leading to a significant return on ad spend.

3. On-site video increases conversion rates

When videos are properly produced, they captivate users. Video availability also enhances credibility and improves visitors’ impressions of the website, even among folks who do not view them.

New smart video technology enhances the potential of on-site videos even more by generating videos in real time. As price, seasonal deals, and last-minute offers change, product videos are created on the fly to overcome the challenges of manual video production. The result is a richer and more engaging shopping experience with higher conversion rates.

4. Online video can be an effective customer service tool

A company’s ability to retain customers depends largely on the quality of service throughout the customers’ lifetime with the brand. Use video for product demonstrations, to provide order and provisioning status, or to deliver complex bills, statements, and invoices with an easily digestible explanation of usage and fees. Companies pursuing this approach have customers who make more informed decisions and less calls to the contact center, which results in lower support costs, greater trust and credibility, and higher customer satisfaction.

5. Online video makes for more impactful nurturing campaigns

The effectiveness of email campaigns, newsletters, loyalty programs, and customer portals can be enhanced with personalized offerings that resonate based on profile, shopping history, and browsing trail.

Personalized video helps nurture, upsell, and retain existing customers. The open rate for video newsletters, for example, is two to three times higher than it is for text. Personalized video newsletters can include a greeting with the recipient’s name and display promotional offerings based on browsing history, geography, or preference segmentation.

These five applications of online video bridge the gap between live and virtual experiences for the consumer. Plus, they offer the most streamlined way to present information in all your customers’ touch points with your brand.

Jim Dicso is president and chief revenue officer of SundaySky.

(Photo courtesy of Bigstock: Happy Woman)

Unselfishness: The World's Most Ethical Company & Why Collaboration Works

Rohit — Thu, 24 May 2012 13:50:44 +0000

NOTE: This is an excerpt from Chapter 6 of my new book Likeonomics all about Unselfishness, the 3rd principle of Likeonomics. I hope you enjoy it!

The biggest clue that Jim Sinegal is not your ordinary CEO came in an article in The Seattle Times a few months before his retirement. The headline read: ‘‘Jim Sinegal takes pay cut in last year as Costco CEO.’’

If that seems like an extraordinary thing for a CEO to do, it’s not all that makes Sinegal and the members-only warehouse retailer Costco unique.

Costco has a rule that no branded items can be marked up more than 14 percent and no private-label brand item more than 15 percent. In contrast, some of their competitors markup as much as 50 percent for products such as fashion items. The policy comes directly from Sinegal’s belief that the path to building a successful company is passing savings directly to customers. He is fanatical about it.

As Costco fresh food buyer Jeff Lyons once explained, the store managers used to dread the monthly budget meetings with Sinegal for a single reason: ‘‘Our margin goal is 10 percent, and there’d better be a very good reason you did better than that. Otherwise Jim will say, ‘Well, why didn’t you lower prices?’’’

As if a CEO taking a pay cut and a limit on profits wasn’t enough, Costco has also built a reputation as one of the most generous employers in the retail sector. Their standard employee salary of $17 per hour is more than two times the federally mandated U.S. minimum wage and nearly 50 percent more than their closest rival. In addition, the full health and 401(k) benefits are perks that have helped Costco maintain an extremely low employee turnover and low theft rates (a common issue for other retailers).

You might be tempted to think that with all this generosity toward employees and customers, Costco would be lucky to break even. They are certainly no darling on Wall Street, as Deutsche Bank analyst Bill Dreher once complained, ‘‘Costco continues to be a company that is better at serving the club member and employee than the shareholder.’’ Sinegal, though, takes this whining criticism from money hungry Wall Street analysts in stride. ‘‘We think when you take care of your customer and your employees, your shareholders are going to be rewarded in the long run. And I’m one of them [shareholders]; I care about the stock price. But we’re not going to do something for the sake of one quarter that’s going to destroy the fabric of our company and what we stand for.’’

So far, the philosophy is working. Since its founding in 1983, Costco has grown at about 15 percent every year with $88.9 billion in revenue for 2010. They are the biggest seller in the United States of fine wines and the average Costco store generates nearly double the revenue of an average store from their closest competitor, Sam’s Club. It is an impressive result for a company described by the media as the ‘‘Anti-Wal-Mart,’’ as they refuse to charge their customers more or shave the benefits and salary of their employees. Yet, as Sinegal (who is retiring in 2012) is painfully aware, Costco seems to stand alone in their unselfish behavior. Why don’t more companies adopt this approach to business if it works so well?

One popular argument why they don’t is the view that businesses (and people by extension) are inherently selfish. There is a wide body of research and thinking to support the argument that at a basic level, people always focus on themselves first thanks to the natural human instinct for self-preservation.

What about the Selfish Gene?

In 1976, an evolutionary biologist named Richard Dawkins wrote a book called The Selfish Gene. In it, he elaborated on his research that suggested people were genetically predisposed toward a sort of ‘‘social Darwinism’’ in which we each would look out for ourselves first. His theories were centered on looking at people through the lens of a biologist. As a result, his theories predicted that there may be selfish behavior in nature out of necessity, but the alternative was also true. He would go on to write that this idea also explained what you might call ‘‘biological altruism’’—the instance that explains moments like when bees commit suicide using their stingers to protect the hive.

Author Mary Midgley posited another theory in her book Evolution as Religion, saying, ‘‘People not only are selfish and greedy, they hold psychological and philosophical theories which tell them they ought to be selfish and greedy.’’

All of these were shades of the theory that author Ayn Rand also popularized by calling ‘‘rational egoism’’ or rational selfishness. Her philosophy was that any action was rational if it maximized one’s self interest. In 1964, she published a book on the topic called The Virtue of Selfishness, where she argued that one’s own happiness should be the highest purpose in life.

For decades, this argument persisted. In 2000, Robert D. Putnam delivered what should have been the knockout blow in favor of the selfishness argument. His book Bowling Alone profiled what he called the collapse of community, where large groups of people ‘‘began to join less, trust less, give less, vote less, and schmooze less.’’ The cover of his book featured the powerful image of a man bowling alone, a sport that Putnam noted only five years earlier was usually done with others and seen as a social activity.

But that same year something fundamental had started to change. The dot-com boom was just beginning, and the Internet was offering a way for people to connect with others around the world. The Internet didn’t change people overnight into more selfless and altruistic people. It hasn’t really done it over the long term either. But it was one of several factors that started to expose that perhaps we aren’t quite as selfish as some thinkers and scientists have made us out to be.

Wikinomics and the Rise of Collaboration

The first time I read Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, I expected the opening story might be about the rise of Wikipedia. On any level, it is the most significant global example of the power of unselfish collaboration, with millions of editors and over 4 million content pages created without any financial compensation.

Instead, they told the story of Goldcorp, a traditional gold mining business that realized great success in March of 2000 by issuing their ‘‘GoldCorp Challenge,’’ where prize money was offered to anyone who could help GoldCorp calculate the best places to dig for gold in one of their mines.

Their biggest risk was to share all of their proprietary data about mining sites online and invite anyone to contribute—a move that was unheard of in their closed and secretive industry. Suggestions for digging locations came in from around the globe, and more than half were for dig locations that GoldCorp themselves had not identified. Much to their surprise, more than 80 percent of those suggested locations resulted in ‘‘substantial quantities of gold.’’9

As Tapscott and Williams went on to conclude, the Internet has allowed some of the most fruitful collaborations in modern history, even more significant than digging up lots of gold. From scientists working together to map the human genome to new open source programming platforms like Linux—the positive examples of unselfish collaboration are all around us.

The power of mass collaboration goes far beyond just Wikipedia.

In some cases, like the GoldCorp Challenge, people may contribute for the promise of a reward. But in many cases, they are simply sharing their expertise and passion online because they want to be a part of something.

This excerpt is from Chapter 6 of Likeonomics, all about Unselfishness - the third of the TRUST principle that I lay out in the book. For a longer excerpt, please visit the book website at www.likeonomics.com/excerpt - and if you enjoyed the reading this, please consider buying Likeonomics today!

4 Ways To Sell To Customers Before They Start Looking For You

Thu, 24 May 2012 13:48:36 +0000

This is a special Small Business Week guest post from Rohit Bhargava.

Marketing is a pretty simple thing to describe. It encompasses all the things that you do to try and reach people who are seeking the types of products or services that you can provide. The only problem in traditional marketing is that you’re competing with everyone else who is trying to reach someone about the same thing. Want to guess how many lawn care businesses have amazing specials as the spring season starts?

charliecurve via Flickr

Instead of joining that same race, what if you could position your business to sell to your potential customers before they even realize they need you? Sounds great in theory – but there is a secret here and it has everything to do with YOU and your ability to build personal relationships with potential customers before they think you need them. This is the idea at the heart of my new book called Likeonomics – which focuses on why people do business with small business owners and companies that they like, and how real word of mouth, powerful referrals and unshakeable customer loyalty really happens. Here are a few tips on how to build a more likeable business, adapted from ideas the book:

1. Create An Online Micro Genius Bar – One of the greatest things about the Internet is that you can see all kinds of questions that people are asking about the things that you may be an expert in. Anything from plumbing questions to how to properly do taxes – your expertise is desperately needed. No one has the time to spend all day answering questions for free, but consider what might happen if you just spent 20 minutes a week looking at some of these questions online in forums or on Twitter, or on Facebook. By answering a few, and linking back to your website, you’re building goodwill, demonstrating your expertise, and putting your business in the position where as soon as someone needs help in your area … you’re their go to resource.

2. Forecast For The Obvious – There are certain undeniable moments in purchase behaviour that happen every year. Moms take their kids to buy back to school supplies in August. Guys desperately look for flowers around Valentine’s Day. One of the cleverest promotions I saw was someone from a local tree removal company handing out brochures near the outdoor market where we went one year to buy our Christmas tree. Not only did they volunteer to take away your tree for free after the holidays – but while they visited your property, they would look at your trees and tell you if any were in danger of falling and may need to be removed. If we do end up needing any tree removal, guess who I’ll call first?

3. Promote To Complimentary Customers – Customers of one product often become customers of another over time. People who just booked an island vacation, for example – may very soon realize that they need new luggage, or fitness classes to fit into that bikini. This may seem like an obvious connection, but those two events may be separated by six months. How could you build a relationship with that person well in advance so when they do get closer to their vacation, you’re already in their mind?

4. Introduce Your Business Through Social – The reason that so many businesses are so excited about the potential of Facebook advertiser is not really because of the super niche targeting so you can specific someone’s age, region, interests, etc. Instead, perhaps the coolest thing about Facebook is that often when you see an ad for something that a friend likes, it will tell you that your friend also likes that product or service. Built into the ad is a social endorsement from a friend. This can be a powerful motivator for someone to call your business when they do need to buy something because they see an opinion from a friend that they know and trust.

Rohit Bhargava is the author of the new book Likeonomics, a guide for small businesses (and anyone else!) to become more likeable and why that matters for business success. For an exclusive excerpt and special offer only for Duct Tape Marketing readers, visit www.likeonomics.com/ducttapemarketing

4 Ways To Sell To Customers Before They Start Looking For You is a post from: Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing

Nietzsche on Maturity

Thu, 24 May 2012 12:51:16 +0000

“The struggle of maturity is to recover the seriousness of the child at play.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

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Why You Hate Being the CEO

Related Posts:

The Positive and Negative Sides of Social Networking [Guest Post]

The tyranny of low price

Success has no purpose

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Five Reasons to Create Online Videos for Your Customers

Unselfishness: The World's Most Ethical Company & Why Collaboration Works

4 Ways To Sell To Customers Before They Start Looking For You

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Nietzsche on Maturity