• How Do You Measure the ROI of Social Media? You Don't.
  How Do You Measure the ROI of Social Media? You Don't.
  (tags: socialmedia roi social media brain marketing hubspot socialmediaroi toread work)
• 26 Excellent Presentations On Social Media For Non Profits (Add YOUR Ideas In Comments!) | Blog of Mr. Tweet
  If you’ve been thinking of launching or expanding your organization in social media, Slideshare is a good starting point for information and advice. But it can be time-consuming to pick through a wide range of slideshows to find those that are up-to-date, actionable, and appropriate to nonprofits
  (tags: socialmedia socialnetworking web2.0 social presentation twitter facebook nonprofit fundraising)

Watch out! There's a Grumpy Old Man about!

I blogged about this earlier, but at the request of a couple of emailers, here’s the third of 10 ‘clues’ you need to ‘get’ if you want to engage meaningfully with curmudgeons like me.
[clue one is here, [clue two is here]

Firstly, some background…

Building on from Tip Two, we curmudgeons want to preserve the things we value: you know, like our health, our wealth, our teeth, our collection of childhood navel fluff, our toenail clippings, and so on.

One of the basic psychological tenets (ask your friendly local psychologist — me if you happen to be nearby; I’m usually friendly during daylight hours and if you wave large denominations of cash at me) is that we are more scared of losing something than we are of gaining something.

That’s why direct marketers always talk about ‘time limited offer’ and “call within the next 30 minutes and you…” and so on.

The unspoken psychological button is that we risk losing something if we don’t ring in the next 30 minutes, or don’t respond within 48 hours to that special web-only offer (you know the one, the offer that if you go back to that page 48 hours later it will still be saying you only have 48 hours left; the end-date of the offer ‘magically’ changes. It’s a simple piece of web script – get over it).

But trust me and a million web and direct marketers — you WILL be more motivated to purchase if you risk losing something — even if it’s something you don’t actually want! Your psychology ‘talks’ you into creating ’solid, valid, logical reasons’ why you suddenly need that dual overhead flanging scrumption-shiner, even if you don’t even know what it is or what it does.

So, Tip Three: show us how to hold on to what we have, be it our house, our nest egg, our health, our mobility, our self-respect.

Watch out! There's a Grumpy Old Man about!

I blogged about this earlier, but at the request of a couple of emailers, here’s the second of 10 ‘clues’ you need to ‘get’ if you want to engage meaningfully with curmudgeons like me. [clue one is here]

Firstly, some background…

If you have been raised in a Western culture you have probably also been brought up with a ‘Protestant’ work ethic — meaning that you take it on your shoulders to carry the burden of generating enough income to support ourselves and loved ones once you retire.

But with the figure of $1million being banded about as the ‘minimum’ you need to enjoy a comfortable (and no more than that) retirement, how many of us can put hand on heart and say we have at least that stashed away.

I used to be a cat burglar. True. I’ve got a Swiss bank account with 40,000 cats in it. [boom tish]

We curmudgeons are very interested in all this money and investing stuff (yes, especially after you U.S. merchant bankers stuffed the world for the rest of us!), but we are risk-averse in case we drop a bundle right before we retire and have no means to recoup it.

We also, despite views to the contrary, haven’t completely lost ALL our marbles: we are still able to and interested in finding out more about the topics that interest us, like social media, history, adolescent taxidermy (that’ll fix those blimmin’ neighbourhood teenagers!), investing for dummies, and so on.

So, Tip Two: offer us continuing education on financial matters, and position your financial products as providing above-average market returns with lower-than-average risk.

Good bloody on ‘em! They started before anyone else. They listened to the conversations and comments about their first foray. They regrouped and they entered the conversation again.

Stop the bloody whinging, Australia – at least they are IN THE MIX – how many other Aussie blue chips are?

Santos? Westpac? NAB? Any effin’ mining companies? Westfield?

Come on, fellow social media luminaries -  let’s CELEBRATE someone having the intestinal fortitude to START opening up their ‘closed shop’ culture. How many other Aussie blue chips are ready to even begin unravelling their culture to be ‘open’ instead of fish-sphincteringly closed.

Watch out! There's a Grumpy Old Man about!

I blogged about this earlier, but at the request of a couple of emailers, here’s the first of 10 ‘clues’ you need to ‘get’ if you want to engage meaningfully with curmudgeons like me.

Firstly, some background…

Curmudgeons my age don’t think of ourselves as ‘old’ — as in all of life, ‘old’ is relative (I have some old relatives) and is usually 20 years more than one currently is.

But irrespective of whether we ‘think’ we are old or not, we quite often ‘enjoy’ the following:

• Onset of illness or health worries
• Frustration with new technology and our seeming inability to ‘pick it up’ like dem’ dangnabbit young whipper-snappers seem to
• Feeling obsolete or irrelevant as far as the mainstream (aka youth-oriented) culture appears
• Lack of energy
• Insomnia (or unable to ‘bounce out of bed and greet the dawn’)
• Weight gain (not me, of course, but OTHER curmudgeons, of course!)
• Hair loss or turning into a replica of Santa Claus
• Teeth looking old and raggedy, or just plain falling apart
• Eyesight fading
• Loss of hearing.
• I said, LOSS OF HEARING you old fart
• Enlarged prostate (I won’t bore you with the details)
• Worries about having enough dollars in the bank in retirement
• Lack of relevance as the family moves out and ‘Grumpa’ makes the grandchildren cry when he looks at them

YES, yes, yes… we have more free time, a sense of achievement in our career or life (hopefully), and a retirement to look forward to (no having to deal with rush hour traffic, nor that inane new boss, for starters).

But the many drawbacks of getting ‘old’ make us more likely to be curmudgeonly than saintly, and the targets of our complaints are the usual suspects: the banks, the pharmaceutical companies, the health system, why policemen look so flamin’ young, the government (federal, state and local), taxes, the media, politicians, and teenagers.

So, Tip One: if you can identify what irks the particular GOM you wish to talk to, and empathise with their antipathy for their particular enemy of choice, you can bond on a deeper level than if you just came wading in to a conversation like a used car salesman.

Norton Internet Security 2010: I give it a 7/10.

Lee Hopkins on YouTube

Norton Internet Security 2010

Good points:
* NOT a resource hog (see the video)
* tons of great information in a great, easy to understand interface
* FINALLY Norton allows you back up/copy your ‘Identity Safe’ data from one pc to another ['Identity Safe' is the username/password stuff, credit card info, etc., that Norton stores securely -- I just wish I knew where so I could change it to my Dropbox]
* very fast when scanning

Dislikes:
* a big box for just a cd (I know, this is an old complaint, but it never hurts to re-iterate it)
* your usb stick is the ONLY place you can store your backup ‘Identity Safe’ data – no, I cannot store it in my Dropbox. Booo!
* the ‘other’ pc must also be running NIS 2010 – not overly handy when you find yourself in a web cafe or the Qantas Lounge
* is my laptop getting old, or do I have to ‘wake up’ ‘Identity Safe’ by clicking on the Norton toolbar when going to my first password-protected site for the day?
* why no toolbar for Google Chrome? I actually quite like it as a browser…

Disclaimer: NIS 2010 review copy sent to me from Norton – thanks, Natalie!

• Twitter Cluelessness : The World :: American Express OPEN Forum
  As a small business person, you can’t afford to look clueless anywhere on the Internet, but this is especially true on Twitter. Read on if you want to avoid this fate.
  (tags: twitter tips socialmedia howto socialnetworking social marketing etiquette bestpractices guykawasaki)
• 35 social media KPIs to help measure engagement | Blog | Econsultancy
  But standing back and looking at the bigger picture is not going to be enough for your data-mad boss, is it? It’s a bit too soft focus, right? He or she is going to want to see proof that all this social optimisation is actually working.

  If that’s the case, then don’t worry: there are lots of things you can measure…

  (tags: socialmedia measurement analytics social metrics roi business media engagement)
• A Tweet Read Across Britain Unleashes a Cascade of Vitriol on a User – NYTimes.com
  Fans of Stephen Fry gang up on a mild critic: "It was also an example of how Twitter reinforces the tendency of adults to behave like high school students, passing rude notes, spreading exaggerated rumors and obsessing endlessly — and pointlessly — about who said what mean thing about whom."
  (tags: stephenfry critic twitter rumour rumor twitterstorm)

Yes, my lovelies – articles worth reading that I haven’t got time to blog about in depth, but that are MOST DEFINITELY worth your time reading!

Neville Hobson, building on a Brian Solis post after a good look at a Forrester report, comments on how he sees the future of the social web.

I summarize everything like this: It’s about people, not technology: how people behave online and the pivotal role social networks have on catalyzing behaviour change. Isn’t that actually what Forrester, Brian Solis and others are really saying in slightly different ways?

I include Twitter in that broad heading of social networks, incidentally: together with its ecosystem, it is a social network to many, and may become one of the most influential and change-making of all, far more than it is now.

What do you think? How do you see the future (the immediate one: within the next four to five years) of the social web?

Required reading:

• The Future of the Social Web – post by Brian Solis on October 30.
• The Future Of The Social Web – report by Forrester Research, published on April 27, 2009.
• The Future of the Social Web: In Five Eras – post by Jeremiah Owyang, primary author of the Forrester report, on April 27, 2009.

———————

Pizza Hut iPhone app generates an extra $1m sales: (courtesy of the EConsultancy blog)

Another example of the potential of mobile commerce comes from Pizza Hut, with its iPhone app generating $1m in sales in the three months since launch. The app, which allows customers to order food on the move, is approaching the figure of 1m downloads. It is only available in the US at the moment.

———————

The gap between corporate culture and the Web2.0 society: (courtesy of Neville Hobson)

For us the lines between friends and work colleagues are already beginning to blur and we are in contact with people all over the World on a regular basis. If we work for a company where the IT department has locked down what operates inside the firewall and restricted access to Facebook or Twitter, it doesn’t really bother us that much. We’ve got an iPhone or a Blackberry in our pocket, and we can still get at what we need.

The smart organizations are the ones that realize the power that these kinds of connections and collaboration tools can provide. Rather than putting up roadblocks, they are encouraging adoption of the tools to reduce costs, increase efficiency and make their teams work more effectively. They can see how they can liberate new ideas and get some real ROI. However, they also realize that an organization’s culture may need to change to allow this this kind of team working and cross collaboration to happen.

———————

Everything you wanted to know about the ePUB format for ebooks: My favourite tech blogger, Amit Agarwal, on the format that every ereader can read (btw, I LOVE my new acquisition, the ECOReader – longer review post about it coming one day soon).

ePub is now a standard e-book file format that is supported by almost* every e-book reading device include Sony Reader, BeBook, IREX Reader, iPhone and the upcoming Nook from Barnes & Noble’s.

If you want to publish your own books or blog in ePUB format, the easiest option is that you compose the text in Word (or Google Docs), save it as an RTF file and then you use Amazon’s Stanza program to convert that document into an ePUB ebook.

———————

Revelation and Reinvention by Katie Chatfield

The Perfect Gift for a Man – 30 Stories about Reinventing Manhood :

Well-known author of the book Raising Boys, Steve Biddulph:This is one hell of a book. Born out of a triple j week  focusing on men’s lives, and created by its listeners, it’s a remarkable piece of work.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the current suicide rate for men in Australia is more than three times the rate of women. But research shows that encouraging men (and young men in particular) to share their feelings and their experiences has a huge impact on their health and wellbeing.

Please buy this wonderful book for the men in your life – regardless of whether they need it or not. Encourage them to read it and to share it with their mates, with their uncles, fathers and sons.

You can buy the printed book from Blurb.com or you can purchase the eBook version from The Perfect Gift for a Man website. ALL the profits from the book are being donated to The Inspire Foundation.

You can also find out more about the book and see the social media release here.

And dip you toes into some of the chapters here (make sure you have some tissues):

• Gavin Bollard
• Gavin Heaton
• Julian Cole
• Jye Smith
• Mark Pollard
• Scott Drummond
• Trent Collins

Trust me, I know from first-hand experience the desire to contemplate a pain-free existence on the ‘other side’ of death is something more men think about – and think deeply – than you would believe. I am working my way through the out-of-print but still 40% downloadable Suicide and Attempted Suicide: Methods and Consequences by Geo Stone after my own bout of crippling depression. For some, life starts off tough and you learn to survive and grow wiser and stronger. For others, as you get older life gets tougher.

———————

Tweetbait by Mitch Joel

In the old day (like two years ago), linkbait was one of the best ways to get recognition, attention and comments for your Blog, but things are quickly changing.

A retweet is one of the better metrics to gauge success with Twitter and could well be one of the best web metrics overall.

Fighting for that attention and the short nature of Twitter leaves plenty of room for Tweetbait to make linkbait seem look like a joke.

Mitch is on to something here…

———————

PR People Getting Pushier with Bloggers Since the Recession: Krizia (Eat Smart Age Smart blog) on Darren Rowse’s blog is noticing that the nature of engagement betwixt PR agency/person and blogger is getting ‘tougher’.

The few requests for free samples that I had sent were returned to me with a long string of questions:

• “How long have you been blogging?”
• “What’s your PR rank?”
• “Are you on Twitter?”
• “Are you on Facebook?”
• “How many unique users?”
• “How many page views?”
• “How fast can you get our review on your site?”
• “Have you won any awards in the past?”
• “Send us links to past reviews you’ve written.”
• “What angle will you take with this feature?”
• “I need all your company details before we release any samples to you.”
• “Will you promote this on social media networks?”
• “Are you going to shot a YouTube video like you did for other brands?”
• “You said the review would be up last week, WHERE IS IT?” … etc.

I am grateful that Text100 and Sarah at Forrester Research don’t behave in such ill-mannered and plain rude ways!

———————

Garr Reynolds shows how simple it is to create a new palate of colours (aka a ‘theme’) and use them in your slideshow presentations. Take a photo you like, analyse it, and bingo!

One of the coolest ways to assemble a unique color theme for a presentation is to create a simple palette by extracting colors from a key image that you think represents the appropriate colors for your talk. You can do something similar to this within your slideware application, of course, but Kuler can do it automatically and give you some additional options for tweaking the colors

If you are tired of the same old themes you see at conferences and presentations, read Garr’s post to find out how to create something both stylish and unique to you. Cool.

———————

*GOM – Grumpy Old Men, that is.

We need talking to differently than if we were… oh, I dunno… 30-something. But here’s your first clue:

We are not frickin idiots! Even people over the age of 30 can [gasp] ‘get’ social media.

I say this in response to the totally ridiculous banter that has been floating around the last few days and the insinuation that Edelman senior staffers are abdicating their responsibility around Social Media and letting junior staffers ‘do all that social media nonsense stuff’. Trust us, when we see Apple’s share price take a tumble because of social media, and we see United Airlines’ do the same, we DO take notice.

As @shel  quite rightly points out,

That is, Baby Boomers can be well-schooled in social media and still glean tons of insight from those younger employees who were born into the digital era and have grown up networked 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
[snip]
I’m with BlogHer co-founder Jory Des Jardins, who commented, “I think it’s brilliant that (Edelman’s) sr people are learning the more tactical aspects of (social media) from the digital natives on staff. Even if we old folks get the promise of social media, we don’t necessarily know how to build our Tweetdecks. Kudos to Edelman.”

And let’s not forget, the folks who have been around the Social Media space for a long time in Australia (that is to say, longer than 4 years) are a mixed bunch of ages: some in their late teens/early twenties, some like Monsieur Cook and I, in our crusty dotage. But Cook and I still ‘got it’ early on.

• Microsoft Word Help FAQ. How to create a glossary in Microsoft Word
  FANTASTIC site full of tips and ideas on how to get word working 'for' you, not 'against' you in your working life.
  (tags: word microsoft office tutorials book howto software glossary tips+tricks)