The first rule you (should) learn on Twitter is that no one cares what you’re doing, unless who you are adds perspective to that activity. I care what chefs and farmers eat, but otherwise find meal updates are banal.

Hopefully it won’t be long after that that you learn to get off Twitter’s homepage and onto software (like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, Seesmic, etc) that makes it easier for you to process all the information and insight traded daily on the platform.

But if you’re not up to a professional tool, or learning something new isn’t an option for you right now, paper.li is here to help.

It displays the content pointed to by the people you’re following as a newspaper. Something we’re all familiar with.

My Twitter stream as a newspaper

Beyond familiarity, it’s a nice way to process the information because:

• you can see more of it before choosing to click the link to the source.
• the articles are organized by category/subject matter for easy scanning

A more expensive alternative would be to get your hands on an ipad and download Flipboard. It helps turn Facebook’s horrendous interface into a pleasurable way to peruse news from your network. It also, (currently, though this must be changing soon), let’s you add up to seven other RSS streams to your personal newspaper. All beautifully rendered.

Will this be the thing that helps you start to appreciate Social Media?

The Twitter Barry A. Martin Daily

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Let’s take a moment to marvel at one small innovation: The response video. But first, consider one of its earlier incarnations–the answer song. The answer song (as I discovered on CBC’s Vinyl Tap) is a song made in response to another song. So, Mary Wells records My Guy and a year later, in response, The Temptations record My Girl (turns out Smokey Robinson wrote both songs).

Hip Hop’s (Warning: Major NSFW!) version of the answer song takes a slightly different turn. So, Hip Hop star Khia records (Waring: Major NSFW!) My Neck My Back in praise of female sexuality and frankly cunnilingus, and Too Short cooks up a misogynistic response entitled (Waring: Major NSFW!) My Dick My Sack. Well, we’ve traveled some distance from the My Guy/My Girl era. Moving on.

What’s involved in coming up with an ‘answer’ song?

A person has to hear a song, then go into a recording studio, then cut a track and get it out there. There’s a lot of time lost between inspiration and response. And time is of the essence for those of us who get itchy waiting for the bank machine to spit out our money–never mind the teller from days of yore.

Now consider what’s involved in making a YouTube video response.

With the technology of new smaller video cameras like the Flip or our current favorite Kodak Xi8, making video is a no-brainer. And uploading video has never been simpler. Although, truth be told, uploading video can be more time consuming than you’d think.

When responding to an existing video on YouTube, you can either make and upload a new video, or you can choose a video you’ve already uploaded. Here’s some information on both approaches.

The benefits of creating a response video are:

• If the original video is well viewed, chances are yours will be too. A pretty decent response to the wildly popular Double Rainbow video (over 14 million views) called Double Rainbow Song received over 34 thousand views. Far more than it probably would have received on its own.
• It’s a much more creative way to ‘comment’ on a video.Beyonce’s Single Ladies has 34 video responses, from kids to plus sized single ladies to this woman (video below) with a little piece of advice for her single friends.
• It acknowledges that one video inspired another even though there may not be a direct link between the two.

Point is, you can respond quickly and creatively without very much effort at all.

P.S Watch for a special Hypenotic response video hitting the airwaves tomorrow. So much fun!

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Posted via email from Barry A. Martin Feed

With a dynamic website, multiple twitter accounts, and the campaigns we run for clients, I’m obviously a proponent, but I’m not going to sell you on it in this post. I’m interested in teasing out what it is that inspires a particular mind-set in the anti-camp.

It never ceases to amaze me how many smart people I sit across from in meetings and at events that say things like:

I don’t get it. It doesn’t make sense/It’s a waste of time/I’ll never do that.

How those two statements end up next to each other eludes me. It’s like they’re saying:

My shoe is on fire. Want a coconut?

photo credit: evris28

To me, the first sentence suggests further investigation is required. “I don’t get it”, is an opportunity:

• Other people probably don’t either, and you might be able to get a head start by diving in
• You may find a new way of doing things that saves you time, money, energy or is simply more fun

But the possibilities are endless. And the people we meet tend to be hard driving intra or entrepreneurs. One assumes they’ve had the imagination to envision something that others could not to get where they are. So what is it about Social Media that’s hard to fathom?

Is it that the metrics aren’t obvious? What are you measuring now that suggests you shouldn’t waste time looking for new opportunities?

Is it that the concept of earning attention instead of vying for it is too foreign? What gets your attention? What do you notice, remember, participate in, act on or share? Does the stuff you seek out stick with you better than the stuff you come across randomly?

Per Malcolm Gladwell’s suggestion, I’ve spent my 10,000 hours assessing the value and influence of the strategic use of Social Media and I explain to the folks who’ll listen that there are better opportunities for getting at their goals through engagement than there have been for years.

We haven’t seen a cultural shift in the way people are being influenced by media of this order since the advent of the printing press. You can reach more people more easily who are actually interested in what you’re offering. Moreover–they can reach out to you!

photo credit: micurs

I’d like to be proven wrong on this, but I’m left with the conclusion that anyone not working on a plan to use the web as a strategic resource to power their mission:

• Seriously lacks vision or imagination
• Is avoiding leadership
• Is squeezing the juice out of an existing play while they can

Business, markets, public sentiment, and the way we’re being influenced are mutable factors. They require a flexible approach to marketing that builds a foundation and grows slowly, over the long term. Invest in your marketing wisely.

And you don’t have to investigate something new every day, how about just the revolutionary stuff?

photo credit: smemon87

Once upon a time, I thought I wanted to be a PR professional. I suited up and went for an interview at Humber College’s Public Relations program.

The first interview question was “did you bring a resume?” I realized I had failed the first PR interview test. I didn’t have all the necessary documentation with me. Bad PR girl. Bad.

I thought the next best thing would be to fax my resume over the moment I got home. Seemed like a good PR professional-type thing to do. Moments after I faxed it, I took a big gulp and realized that the resume I had sent looked like a dog’s breakfast–bullets everywhere, boo-boos galore.

I waved goodbye to my PR career (thank goodness).

The impulse to act quickly without sufficient contemplation doesn’t serve me well in print. But it turns out, it makes me a better blogger. My “just get it done” approach means that I actually publish blog posts. I don’t just think about them, I don’t write drafts and save them and contemplate. I hit the publish button and put the good-word “out there.”

Yes, sometimes I make grammatical errors or things don’t work quite the way I’d hoped. But, I believe my approach is better than any other because at least people get to read my posts. They live in the world.

And, I’ve come up with some tricks for how to be a prolific blogger without making myself, or Hypenotic look bad:

• Schedule time to blog: Make a commitment and block off the time in your calendar.
• It’s not extra: You can’t think of it as something you’ll get around to when you have some free time. Blogging is part of your job.
• Keep Notes: You’d be amazed how quickly a good idea for a blog post can evaporate from your memory bank. I’m convinced some of my best blog posts have been the victim of memory failure. Keep a notebook and jot down ideas as they come.
• Look Around: Inspiration is everywhere. The more stuff you expose yourself to, the more content you’ll come up with. That’s why magazines and movies are write-off’s, they’re there to inspire you. Even indirectly. At the very least, set up a really good google reader and update it regularly.
• Mix it Up: Not every post has to be a dissertation on a subject. Give yourself permission to write some really short blog posts.
• Hit Publish: Don’t overthink it. Don’t save it as a draft for further (and further) contemplation. Just publish your post. If you want to amend it, you can do that later. If you want to add to it, you can write another post as a variation of the same topic.
• Have Other People Read and Edit your Work: We have a policy around the office. I ask people to read my blog posts. If they see a boo-boo, I ask them to just go in and change it. They don’t need to point out my mistakes (who likes that anyway?). So, my work is perfected when I’m not even looking.

What tips do you have to getting down to the business of blogging?

photo credit: robertpaulyoung

My three year old had left the back door open and was about to be entertained by an hour’s worth of effort to get the squirrel out.

At the end of the hour, we left Jodi with the scared bushy-tailed fellow now clinging to a window moulding and went out for ice-cream.We tried opening the doors and disappearing upstairs. We tried whistling, coaxing, and googling. To no avail.

And she got him out. By leaving a trail of peanut butter drops out the door.

Flash forward to Monday morning.

Over a breakfast meeting, I was being asked the usual hard questions about Social Media ROI. How do I quantify the return? How do I qualify the investment?  I counter-grilled by trying to get at what magical metrics they were getting from what they were doing previously.

Apart from announcing a sale one day and asking the people who show up where they heard about the event, it’s pretty hard to quantify your ROI. Most of us do business with brands we trust. But I doubt those brands factor what it took for them to be perceived as trustworthy (employees with a good upbringing? delivering on time? clear communications?) into their calculations.

Over the course of the meeting, I had successfully transformed the entrepreneur’s perspective on the benefits of planning to use the web strategically before jumping at tactics. He felt comfortable articulating to his partners the value of earning the attention of more qualified leads and building relationships with them.

As we were leaving, an analogy struck me. Not that your prospects are squirrels, but when you earn their attention with something they’re interested in, lead them where you want them to go, and back off on the hard sell, you end up with a process where everyone wins.

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Barry A. Martin Feed

Sent from my iPhone

Posted via email from Barry A. Martin Feed

Stances like this one, and others (no cutting pizza, no butter on bread) stir up a lot of controversy. But Terroni takes a position on their brand, and they fervently protect it.

Copyblogger writer Brian Clark believes you must have courage to be a leader:

You need the courage to alienate the wrong people in order to resonate with the right people. You need to stick to your convictions when people tell you you’re wrong simply because your knowledge doesn’t mesh with their opinions.

The idea of “protecting your brand” may conjure up images of people sitting around board rooms discussing the minutia of whether a particular shade of red is consistent with the brand “identity”. This is not what I’m talking about. And this is not what I imagine Terroni does.

Brands that stand for something, like Terroni, operate from a gut level. Terroni’s mission in life is to use, make and share authentic Southern Italian food. Authenticity is baked into everything they do. Just like you know which clothing styles suit you and which don’t, good brands just know what ‘fits’ with who they are and what they believe in.

So, when a relative of Terroni’s owner came back from Italy with a brightly patterned, highly textured bag made by Italian women inmates , they got in touch and started carrying Made In Carcere (Made in Prison) bags printed with the Terroni moniker. The bags and accessories are proudly displayed at Terroni restaurants right alongside the olive oil and tomato sauce.

The bags are recycled so they simultaneously give a “second chance” to the fabric they’re made from and the women who manufacture them. The accessories all come from scraps left behind by  high end Italian fashion houses such as Costume National.

Terroni’s co-owner Vince describes the look as “very Italian” which for him probably means “Southern Italian.” The South has the Mediterranean sea where one can imagine the perfect beach-side setting for a lovely yellow and white polka dot bag. It just fits with olives, capers, anchovies and all of the affordable, fabulous ingredients that define Southern Italian cooking.

If I’m waxing a bit poetic it’s because that’s the effect that Terroni’s simple, Southern Italian Food has on me.

In fact, it’s not just Terroni’s food. I’m always happy to eat at Terroni, and I can’t say that about many places (especially not ‘chains’)

Besides the food,  I often look longingly at all the products that line their shelves. Their hot peppers in oil kick some ass. As a product extention, the In Carcene bags and accessories really round out the Southern Italian feel.

Fact is, a brand well executed conjures feelings and creates a story–even if it’s a story or a feeling about someplace you’ve never been. Like I’ve never been to an Italian prison, but man, this headband makes me feel like Anna Magnani in Nella città l’inferno. It carries a mystique that it just wouldn’t have if I bought it at Lululemon.

You can tell Terroni gets it because they deliver these feelings with every plate of pizza and pasta and with my brand new headband. So, let the whiners keep whining and call Terroni’s careful choices “unjustifiable pretentiousness.” I call it being on a mission and maintaining focus and love for the brand and avoiding distractions.

By the way, special props to my dad for taking the pictures. Great job dad!

Lowfoot’s business is based on disruptive thinking, and I’m convinced they’ve got it right. They’ve uncovered the fact that while everyone’s busy figuring out new ways (some green, some not) to meet our ever growing energy needs, no one is really, seriously asking how to build a business on getting people to generate less energy.

So that’s what they’ve done. Lowfoot has staked its business on the power of Smart Meter technology to empower people to reduce their demand for energy and reap rewards (in the form of credits) from using less.

Meetings with these guys are always interesting. They have an “anything is possible” way of thinking that is exciting to be around. One of the insights I gained from today’s meeting is that both Phil and Steve are former class clowns (well, maybe not so former).

The term class clown is generally seen in a negative light. Class clowns are perceived as attention seekers, troubled kids who are using humour to make up for deep-seated insecurity.

If you met Phil and Steve, you’d know that stereotype is pure bunk.

So, I went digging deeper and came up with two very interesting approaches to thinking about the class clown as a model for business innovation.

Copyblogger has a great post on why class clowns rule the blogosphere. The author’s salient point is that while:

“valedictorians are forgotten the moment they step down from the podium,” class clowns are remembered for “telling the truth in an interesting way“and as a result, they are remembered long after school days have drifted by.

This idea of telling the truth in an interesting way fits with Lowfoot’s business model. Lowfoot is committed to turning people into energy generators. They are not afraid to speak truth to power by pointing out that all forms of energy generation (wind, solar, “green”) come at a cost. Just ask the folks in Bala who are facing a “green” dam being built in the centre of their town.

Like Lowfoot, class clowns are good at getting noticed because they’re not invested in the same popularity/unpopularity contests that everyone else is mired in. Fitting in is just not their specialty. Former class clown CEO David Newman does a good job of explaining the skill set that is unique to the class clown:

“Think about it–class clowns, by their very nature, are not afraid to fail, unlike the geniuses. They thrive on being different, unlike the geeks, who suffer by being different. They focus on getting noticed among the noise, unlike the cool kids, who focus on fitting in.”

What’s something the class clown can teach you about running a successful business? Or even better, what’s a class clown antic you’ll never forget.

And, in honor of my new favourite class clowns, I leave you with this: