I ran across this interesting graph at ThoughtGadgets, which shows data from TubeMogul, news outlets and “YouTube stars”.  The lifecycle of a typical YouTube video.

The half-life of a viral YouTube video is now 6 days. Charlie bit me.  David after Dentist.  Evolution of Dance.  Videos have typically stuck around for awhile.  Now, with increasing saturation of content and decreasing attention span (are you still there?), the shelf life of your efforts is quickly diminishing.  75% of eyeballs on a video happen in the first 20 days.  Viral lasted twice as long in 2008.  What’s the future hold?  More of the same.  I’d expect the half-life of a viral video to be 3-4 days within 18 months.

In the future, viral trends will come and go so quickly that most won’t even know they existed. This is huge to understand.  As the web continues to evolve into many micro-communities that make up the whole, it’s possible for trends and memes to sweep through certain areas but not others.   This isn’t the Twittersphere of 2008 anymore.

How to stay relevant and successful? Think narrow, not broad.  Focus on your direct, relevant audience. And most of all, just hope that luck is on your side.

If you’re working with the web, I truly hope you enjoy learning.  A hunger for learning will not only help you with your web efforts, but also make them more productive and fruitful. Never stop learning.

This is just one (very simple) snippet I shared during my keynote presentation at the Penn State Web Conference on Tuesday. Learning is not just vital, it’s necessary for anyone who’s going to deal with the web.

A few quick examples of why I’ve seen the importance of learning this week:

1) On Monday, I presented a two hour workshop on Facebook at the Penn State Web Conference.  One thing we talked about was Facebook Insights.  Sure enough, as I was presenting, Facebook released, a new, more robust platform for Insights. (You can find it at http://facebook.com/insights).  These new Insights are now giving us valuable data on referrers, tab visits, what content is getting the most interaction, and much more.  It’s a huge step for measuring metrics on Facebook.

2) On Wednesday, I presented twice at EduComm (one with Scott Kilmer from ACU, and one with Diane McDonald from Texas A&M).  A question that came up (actually, it came up in Monday’s workshop as well as last Friday’s workshop with the Independent Colleges of Indiana!) was regarding Facebook Page Administrators.  It’s been a long issue that the original page creator/administrator was forever hooked to the Facebook Page. (The “known bug” is still listed in the FAQ.)  This is a question we hear a lot, and we’ve honestly never had a great answer for other than to put administrator rights as high up on the chain of command as possible.

After noticing this on our own BlueFuego Facebook Page, checked approximately 45 pages that I am an administrator on, and the option to remove any Administrator was consistent throughout.

Now, it appears that you can remove any administrator from a Page, regardless of who started it.  This solves huge problems for employee turnover in higher ed, as well as even shifting responsibility of Pages within the organizational structure.   The small changes really do make the difference, some days.

6 presentations in the last 6 days, and the things I’ve said and shared are correct now… but for how long?  Two of the things I shared are already outdated, and we’re not even to Friday yet!  Have a thirst for knowledge and you’ll go very, very far.

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Brad is the CEO at BlueFuego, Inc.  Be sure to subscribe via RSS or email for future posts, including some tips on how to never stop learning.

This is an article that I wrote for the May/June 2010 issue of CASE Currents, and it has been republished with their permission. Would love your thoughts and comments. Enjoy!

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Bird on a Wire: Twitter the next big thing or dead on arrival?

By Brad J. Ward

The baby bird has officially left the nest.

Since its launch in 2006, the social media tool Twitter has grown from a “wait-and-see” communications site to a mainstream media darling. Last year was the tipping point for this site, which is as easy to use as it is to confuse. As its popularity has grown, there has been a shift in the way Twitter is used. Early Twitter adopters would follow thousands of users they’d never met, but as the platform has become more mainstream, the norm has changed.

According to a recent report from media analysis firm Sysomos.com, 92.4 percent of Twitter users follow less than 100 people. New users are more reserved, tweet less, and follow a more select group of people that they know. This means that institutions need to provide value in their Twitter feeds, or they simply won’t be followed by the audience they want to reach.

While Twitter can be effective, its traffic still falls far behind other social Web platforms in the United States. According to Compete.com, Facebook’s traffic is 467 percent higher than Twitter’s, with YouTube seeing 314 percent more use, and even MySpace getting 115 percent more traffic.

Regardless of the hits that each site receives, many institutions are launching official Twitter accounts. According to a March 2009 study conducted by BlueFuego, only 9.4 percent of 1,387 alumni association home pages had social Web page links. In December 2009, the number had risen to 34.8 percent, with the presence of a Twitter callout on alumni home pages increasing 327.8 percent since the initial study. LinkedIn increased 12.5 percent, and Facebook increased 5.1 percent.

What type are you?

BlueFuego wanted to dig deeper, so in April 2009, we began classifying more than 2,000 higher education Twitter accounts to better understand how colleges and universities are using the tool to interact with their followers. All accounts were divided into five categories based on the type of updates that they publish. (See charts on page 34.)

Type 1 accounts (32 percent of higher education accounts) provide only news and do not engage in conversation with their followers. These accounts use tools like Twitterfeed.com to push an existing news feed of information to Twitter. Their accounts consistently tweet links that take followers back to their .edu site or an institutional Facebook page. Updates are typically about press releases and events.

Type 1 accounts regularly push out more updates than other accounts. This is due to the publishing of an RSS feed, which results in several updates daily. On average, these Twitter accounts push out 40-60 updates per month. (By comparison, our research of 1,300 Facebook pages in higher education shows an average of 22 updates per month, two to three times less content.)

Type 2 accounts (15 percent) are similar to Type 1 but interject occasional conversation into their tweet streams. If someone were to send an @reply, he or she would likely get a response. About 75 percent or more of the time, however, a Type 2 account is still just pushing news updates.

Type 3 accounts (22 percent) provide limited information but do not share links or attempt to engage with others who follow them. They may offer updates on the institution’s cafeteria menu or list the admissions counselors’ travel schedules, but little more. Type 3 accounts appear to have been created so that the institution has a presence on Twitter. On average, these accounts have fewer followers, follow less people, and have the least amount of updates.

Type 4 accounts (11 percent) are somewhat conversational–they occasionally interact with followers but generally just share 140-character updates about what’s happening on campus. Whereas Type 2 account updates consist primarily of links that send followers away from Twitter, Type 4 accounts do not link away from the site.

Type 5 accounts (20 percent) are very conversational. It’s obvious that staff members are actively monitoring the account and sharing a wide range of information through updates, including links, photos, and videos. They retweet information from other followers and provide varied information to their audience. Type 5 accounts average the most followers and follow back the most, a testament to having a person or team of people actively monitoring the account and engaging with followers.

The 50:25:25 rule

We recommend that our clients adopt a 50:25:25 model when communicating on social Web platforms. Try to make 50 percent of your tweets informational: deadlines, links to press releases and events, and other information that needs to be shared.

The next 25 percent of your tweets should focus on conversations about your brand. Engage your audience with questions or statements regarding your institution, such as: “Snow Day at State! How’s the weather where you are?”

For the remaining 25 percent of updates, engage your audience with conversations that are not about your brand. These updates can be about pop culture, world news, interesting events, and more. The goal is to get them to interact with your institution, but not necessarily about the institution.

The conversation myth?

“Social media gurus” have long argued that Twitter is about the conversation and that accounts that strictly share links aren’t effective. However, our research shows that these assumptions aren’t necessarily true.

Within the five types of Twitter accounts, we further segmented the groups according to who maintains them: admissions, alumni relations, athletics, PR/news, general institution accounts, and an individual college or department within an institution.

Athletics and PR/news have the highest percentage of Type 1 accounts–those only sharing links–at 58 percent and 55 percent, respectively. When looking at the accounts that average the highest number of followers, PR/news is at the top. Athletics averages the most updates per month and follows the most people.

These data show us that Type 1 accounts certainly have a place on Twitter. The audience doesn’t necessarily want to engage or interact with each of your accounts directly and might just be interested in receiving your content in their tweet stream.

However, accounts run by admissions and alumni relations, areas that tend to be more relationship-focused, average more followers and updates when they fall in the Type 5 category, as they are strengthening relationships through conversation and have more to talk about with more people.

Twitter for institutional advancement

Many institutions are now interacting with students in ways that would not have happened pre-Twitter. For example, Abilene Christian University in Texas (www.twitter.com/acuedu), which has a Type 5 account, was actively monitoring a situation in which an enrolled student would occasionally mention on Twitter that she was having a poor experience at ACU. The student’s updates escalated one day, and she exclaimed that she couldn’t wait to transfer.

Scott Kilmer, director of new media, had been monitoring these tweets and stepped in to reply to the student from the ACU Twitter account, saying, “Sorry you’re having a bad day. Send us an e-mail to feedback@acu.edu to let us know how we can help.”

By that afternoon, the student had e-mailed and was referred to student services to talk about how her experience could be better. Later that evening, her Twitter update read, “ACU has the best people. Beth and Haley are two of the most loving people ever.” She was referring to the student services manager and a retention officer that Kilmer put her in touch with after the initial contact.

“Using Twitter to listen to our constituency has been a great way to understand customer feedback,” Kilmer says. “With access to this kind of information, we can identify areas of need and act on them with a certain amount of validation from the average customer.”

Other successful Twitter accounts

Twitter can also help create stronger bonds with followers who have a pre-established affinity for the institution. It didn’t take long for Tim Cigelske, communication specialist at Wisconsin’s Marquette University, to see the value and take advantage of his institution’s Twitter presence.

Marquette (www.twitter.com/marquetteu) is a Type 5 and is one of a handful of accounts to fall in the top 10 percent of higher education institutions in the nation for number of followers, number of accounts followed, number of updates, and number of @mentions. The school recently launched the “Give Marquette” campaign, which was promoted through all institutional media, including Twitter.

One alumnus, who was one of the first and most active followers of @MarquetteU, stepped forward to donate after seeing a tweet about the campaign.

“He direct messaged Marquette via Twitter and asked how he could donate, so I connected him with someone who could work with him personally,” Cigelske explains. “In this case, he was looking to specifically support families and students [who] are ‘working their butts off to send their average-grade students to Marquette,’ since that was the case with him and his family. We gave him information on a fund that would do just that, and it worked out beautifully.”

Twitter can also be used to garner press, as Indiana University East has quickly learned through its @IUEast account. Nasser Paydar (www.twitter.com/paydar), IU East’s chancellor, was one of the first institutional leaders on Twitter, tweeting as early as January 2009. Sending out updates about topics such as campus events, student life and athletics, and the daily life of a chancellor, he is focused on making connections with the local community.

Shortly after Paydar started tweeting, the local newspaper’s education reporter wrote a story about it, and in the process created a Twitter profile for himself. The reporter now follows several official IU East Twitter accounts, which has led to an increase in coverage for the institution.

The future

Even though institutions are finding success with Twitter, the platform is not without its weaknesses. To put the site into perspective, there are more people playing the online game FarmVille on Facebook than using Twitter. Traffic has stalled in recent months (up only 2.5 percent in the past eight months), leaving many to wonder what is next for the site. It’s in an extremely volatile position, and 2010 will be a make-or-break year.

Furthermore, a January 2010 study of Twitter by Sysomos.com found that 50.88 percent of Twitter users and 56.59 percent of tweets are from people living in the United States. Compare this with Facebook, where 70 percent of traffic is outside the United States, and YouTube, where 76 percent of video views are from outside the United States, and it is clear that the international reach of Twitter is limited. An earlier 2009 study by Sysomos.com also revealed that 5 percent of Twitter users account for 75 percent of updates, which also shows that there is a limited audience engaging on Twitter.

Regardless of Twitter’s future, the shift in communication methods and preferences that the platform has created will last beyond Twitter itself. While Twitter is not, and will never be, a magical tool to solve all advancement communications issues, it can still be effective in communicating to your audience.

Shorter, asynchronous updates have become the norm across the Web, as people and brands share more frequent updates with their audiences. The one-to-many communication method allows institutions to reach a larger audience more quickly, but it also requires more time if an institution responds to each person and interaction.

Twitter should not be at the core of your university’s marketing strategy, but it is definitely a tool to be considered when developing your overall plan.

—-
Brad J. Ward is the CEO at BlueFuego Inc., an international higher education consulting firm specializing in new media marketing integration.

Copyright ©2010 by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education; reprinted with permission from the May/June 2010 issue of CASE CURRENTS. All rights reserved.

Hey SquaredPeg Fans! Just wanted to pass along information about the Free on Friday Webcast that I’ll be participating in this Friday. I’m flying out to Philadelphia to do a live video webcast with Adrienne from TargetX on the 5 Fundamentals of Social Web Strategy.

See below and register at http://bit.ly/5Fundamentals for free.  Hope you can tune in at 3pm EST Friday!

———
March 19th
“Social Web Strategy: The Five Fundamentals”
with TargetX’s Adrienne Bartlett and Brad J Ward of BlueFuego, Inc.

Two of the people who know most about using social media to recruit students will cover the five things you should be doing in your web strategy. Brad J. Ward, CEO of BlueFuego, Inc., will join Adrienne Bartlett to review the state of social recruiting.

They’ll focus on real-world examples and provide practical advice for building relationships with prospects.

Spend a fun and informative half-hour and learn the keys to building a social web strategy that works.
———

Let me start by saying this is NOT going to be a blog post telling you to run to Foursquare and Gowalla because it’s the hottest thing since Twitter and you’re definitely going to want to invest all of your time and resources there. Because that’s not the case (yet?).

Gowalla, my preferred location based social network, has intrigued colleges and universities for months with its ‘Trips’ section of the site.  Trips provide a list of suggested spots for you to go to, and was previously a list up to the discretion of the Gowalla team.    It might be 5 famous restaurants in an area, or 10 great photography lookouts on the shore, or a bar crawl in Austin.  But until now, it’s been a headache trying to submit yours to the site.

That changed today.

According to the post, “You’ll be able to name your trip, give it a description, add up to 20 spots of your choosing, then publish it to Gowalla. Your published trips will be viewable in the Gowalla app by your friends. [...] Also, for now, you may only complete featured trips and trips created by your friends.”

I’m excited for this, particularly for one BlueFuego client that happens to have a very saturated population of iPhone users on its campus. I see value for First Week/Orientation, for visitors, and much more. But again, it works for some schools and will be extremely pointless for others. And if you create a trip for your university at this time, the only people who can see it are your friends. This might create a future headache of multiple tours of campus once everything is merged publicly.

Take a good look at your audience before investing too much time in these platforms.  But if you want to have some fun and try the newest toy, check out Gowalla or Foursquare today!

*Subscribe via Email or RSS today or follow @bradjward on twitter for more frequent updates.*

When I first saw these groups popping up, I immediately thought back to the College Prowler / MatchU incident for the Class of 2009, or as you might know it better, FacebookGate.  And here are the two things I thought to myself:

1. Whoever is behind this is fully aware of what happened with FacebookGate last year.
2. Whoever is behind this learned that as a community, we weren’t big fans of them 1) using our official logos and 2) calling it an official group.
3. Whoever is behind this learned that it’s best to be transparent about who is behind the group.

This year’s story starts with Scott Kilmer from Abilene Christian University, a BlueFuego client. He started with a general inquiry to URoomSurf asking for them to provide the contact on ACU’s campus that has purchased their services and/or given permission for URoomSurf to host a matching program with the indication that ACU’s residence halls would be able to fulfill the requests created there. After URoomSurf noted there is no affiliation, Scott asked that they remove the group, which URoomSurf would not. They did, however, change the name of the group from “Abilene Christian University 2014″ to “ACU 2014″. (Luckily, ACU owns the copyrights for both and Scott will now be pointing to 2 lines of the Facebook TOC: 3) We will provide you with tools to help you protect your intellectual property rights. 5) If you repeatedly infringe other people’s intellectual property rights, we will disable your account when appropriate.)

So this is where it gets interesting. I passed the email chain over to the rest of the BlueFuego team to keep them in the loop, and Joe comes back to me with a simple email.  ”Does this name ring a bell???” The WHOIS on URoomSurf.com brings up this name: Justin Gaither.

Either the person behind URoomSurf is so intimate with the details of FacebookGate that they even decided to register the domain name after one of the perpetrators, or it is indeed Justin Gaither who is again behind it, back for round 2.  The same Justin Gaither who owned a company last year called MatchU, which had no web presence and was left largely unremembered/unscathed through the whole incident as College Prowler took the majority of the PR hit.

I’m leaving it open as to whether it’s Justin Gaither behind this again, but here’s what we also know.  It certainly makes sense to forget the MatchU name all together and go with something else to match roommates, such as “URoomSurf.” It also lines up that there’s yet to be a website for URoomSurf.com, just as last year with MatchU.

So, here we go again. Here’s the spreadsheet of all of the groups and member names to date, feel free to chip in. We’re already seeing the same trends as last year, such as common names starting groups as admins.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AoR-2dTA7L87dGRlZVRNUFRHaFJXN3M4REtBYS0yQmc&hl=en

Here’s the list of 499 colleges and universities that URoomSurf intends to target (also listed on the 2nd tab of the Google Doc). Feel free to search schools and fill in the spreadsheet with the information.

Last year I mentioned that I thought this would be less of an issue if they had 1) not pretended to be official institution accounts, 2) used copyrighted images, and 3) had been transparent about who was behind the group.   They certainly listened to the community.  So now that you know the information at hand, what do you think?  What is the institution’s place? Discuss in the comments below.

And a huge thanks to Joe and Scott for kicking this off and making this post happen with their sleuthing!

UPDATE: Scott has successfully gotten the ACU and Abilene Christian University trademarks removed from the group name. It’s now called “Incoming students going to college in Abilene and looking for roommates!!” and no longer shows in a search for ACU 2014.  Nice work, Scott!

UPDATE 2: It’s nice to see they’ve actually put a placeholder on their .com site. We’ll see what happens from here.

UPDATE 3: I removed erroneous claims pointing to a Craigslist ad.  After last year’s Craigslist connection with hiring students to do the dirty work, I overlooked a sentence and did not fully read the Craiglist ad I posted.

I’ve been doing some research on Augmented Reality for higher ed, and ran across a great campaign utilizing it.   First, you might be thinking “What the heck is Augmented Reality?”  (If you already know, skip below for a great example of AR in Higher Ed).

Wikipedia’s definition states that AR is:

Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with (or augmented by) virtual computer-generated imagery – creating a mixed reality.

In a nutshell: when I open the UrbanSpoon app on my iPhone and point the camera around (live direct view of a physical real-world environment), it’s going to show me what restaurants are around me (merged elements based on GPS data and compass location) to give me a mixed reality that looks like the below image.  From there, I can click on it, get user-generated ratings of the restaurant, see a menu, check their open hours, and more. Another way AR works is by reading a “marker” on paper and doing something with it via webcam, as you’ll see in the video below. (Doritos did this awhile back too.)

Augmented Reality in Higher Ed

One university that’s pushing AR is Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. Their partnership with an agency called BCM has created one of the better Augmented Reality applications I’ve seen for student recruitment.  Check out the below video to see what they’re doing with AR and leave your thoughts in a comment below!  (If the below video isn’t visible, click here).

I’m really excited about my upcoming webinar, Strategies for using Facebook Groups and Pages to Yield Students, on Thursday January 28th from 2-3:15pm!

The webinar is $199, and half of the proceeds are going directly to Hope for Haiti, a 501(c)(3) organization that’s using 100% of all  donations to help those affected by the recent earthquake.

We’re going to be discussing all of the changes that have been made to Facebook since the Class of 2013 came through.  Learn more about how you can leverage the updates to Groups to build community and help yield students for your incoming class.  Get informed about the recent changes to Pages that will help you segment and target your messages better, and what trends are coming out of BlueFuego’s research of over 1,200 higher ed fan pages.

I have many key learning objectives for participants of this webinar, including:

- Learn the key differences between Facebook Pages and Groups, and which you should use.

- What to do when students (or spammers!) have already started your Class of 2014 Group or Page.

- How to successfully join and contribute to the community and discussion on Facebook.

- Measuring outcomes: How to track and gauge success of your yielding efforts.

- Targeting messages:  Why the kids in Wichita don’t care about the yield event in Cleveland!

- Social Web Callouts and .edu Integration: How schools are promoting their presence on Facebook.

- Q&A Time: Get specific with your institution’s situation!

Learn more and Register today! Click here.

I just finished my advance copy of Seth Godin’s new book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? It was certainly different than other Seth Godin books, focusing more on you as a person and what you can personally do to make yourself a necessity at your job or in the marketplace.

Oh, and I should mention before the review, I have a free copy of Linchpin to give away before it hits the shelves on January 26th.  After you read my review, answer the question at the end of the review as a comment and I’ll choose my favorite by the end of Friday and ship the book on Saturday AM! (If you win, look for me on the dust cover!)

Let me start by admitting I can’t possibly do this book justice.  It’s fantastic, very well-written, and expands much further beyond this already long review. (To read other reviews that might summarize differently/better, go here.)

For me, there were three main themes that stood out throughout Linchpin:  Art, The Resistance, and Shipping. (If and when you read this book, you might latch on to one of the other themes, but this is what resonated with me.)

You might be wondering what a linchpin is?  Literally, it is a pin inserted through holes at the end of an axle, to secure a wheel in place.  In reference to a human, it is someone who is indispensable or unreplaceable for an organization. When the wheels fall off the wagon, you’re not going anywhere. Linchpins deliver unique creativity, they ship (more on that in a bit), and they understand that their job is to make something happen (p. 221).

Godin argues that we have gone from two teams (management and labor) to a third team now, the linchpins.  “These are the people who own their own means of production, who can make a difference, lead us, and connect us.” In short, a linchpin is a person worth finding and keeping on your team.  You can’t replace them and you need their valuable insight, opinion and production of work.

Art

If you were to pick up this book at any certain point, you might think it was for painters and poets.  Art/Artists are heavily referred to throughout the text.   But according to Godin, we’re all artists now. As factory jobs disappear and the economy that factory jobs were built on crumbles, it’s now the artists who will have success (p. 18).  But factories aren’t just sweatshops and car manufacturers, a factory is “an organization that has it figured out, a place where people go to do what they’re told and earn a paycheck.” (p. 40)

Now that our view of a factory has been shaken, let’s toss Art into the mix.  Art isn’t just for painters and poets. Art is “anything that’s creative, passionate and personal. [...] An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally.” (p. 83)  You don’t create Art as something to keep to yourself, you share that talent or ability with others.   And when you diffuse a situation and provide great customer service to someone on your University’s Facebook page, that’s art.  And as Godin argues, this is the sort of art that will be indispensable in the near future.

Art is human.

Art is interaction.

Art is original. (“Marcel Duchamp was an artist when he pioneered Dadaism and installed a urinal in the museum. The second person to install a urinal wasn’t an artist, he was a plumber.” p. 85)

Art is the product of emotional labor.

And most importantly, Art is a gift.

For me, this blog and its content is a gift to you. My presentations are a gift to the audience. Everything I post here is a gift that I hope will give you insight or takeaways to do your job better. When Nick Denardis reviews websites each week on educheckup.com, he’s being an artist. When Karine Joly spends hours preparing and sending out her Higher Ed Experts newsletter, she’s being an artist.  Artists are optimists, and they have a chance to make things better. Artists have such a passion about their art that they’ll do almost anything to give it away, to make it a gift, to change people (p.98).

Godin goes on to talk about the powerful culture of gifts (giving/receiving art) and how being an artist can be profitable as well, but you’ll have to buy the book to learn that.

The Resistance

What is The Resistance?  “The Resistance is afraid.  Afraid of what will happen to you (and to it) if the ideas get out, if your gifts are received, if the magic happens. [...] The Resistance is nefarious and clever. It creates diseases, procrastination, and most especially, rationalization.” (p. 107-8)

In short, The Resistance is everything in your mind telling you not to do what you want to do.  Moving forward with an idea, suggesting a new way to try things, reallocating your budget towards what makes sense.  The Resistance loves when you start a committee instead of taking action.  The Resistance wants you to slide into complacency. The Resistances wants you to sit on Twitter all….day…… long. Godin calls Twitter “perfect resistance, because it’s never done. There’s always another tweet to be read and responded to. Which, of course, keeps you from doing work.” (p. 134) He later says “You don’t want to take initiative or responsibility, so you check your incoming mail, your Twitter stream, and your blog comments. Surely, there’s something to play off of, something to get angry about, some meeting to go to.” (p. 194)

If The Resistance is making you uncomfortable reading this, it’s winning. Simply put, The Internet is Crack Cocaine for The Resistance. (p. 134)

Godin jokes that if you sat at your desk and watched TV re-runs you’d probably be fired, but it’s apparently alright for you to update Facebook for an hour because that’s “connecting to your social graph”.

So how do you beat The Resistance? For starters, some people simply don’t want to, and they’ll stop reading about right here.  For many, sitting and getting a paycheck is an acceptable way to live.  But it’s also the way to becoming dispensable and easy to let go of.  It’s dangerous to be complacent and not be adding value to your organization.

For those of you who recognize The Resistance holding you back from what you want to accomplish, it’s time to ship.

Shipping

Shipping is sending a project out of the door. Pretty mindblowing, right? But to get to the heart of shipping, you have to think about 1) how you ship, and 2) what you ship.

Godin mentions that he’s written 12 books since 1999.   How? By shipping.  He says:

“Am I some sort of prodigy? I don’t think so. I ship.  I don’t get in the way of the muse, I fight the resistance, and I ship. I do this by not doing an enormous number of tasks that are perfect stalling devices, ideal ways of introducing the resistance into our lives.” (p. 135)

Think of what you’re working on right now.  Does it have a deadline? (It should.)  What is the deadline?  Is the deadline a new deadline that has replaced the old deadline?  If so, you’re not shipping. (Wait… is this blog your stalling device?  I’m honored. )

Godin suggests writing the due date of each project and posting it on the wall, and that done or not, you will ship on this date.  He then outlines the steps and techniques he uses to make sure that the project is absolutely finished by that date (you’ll have to buy the book to see that.)

The idea of shipping was the stickiest for me.  Getting quality projects and ideas out of the door, and doing it on time.  In a world of delayed deadlines and “Phase 2″, it’s easy to get complacent with projects that don’t hit deadlines. That’s what The Resistance wants. Instead, Godin says that “understanding that your job is to make something happen changes what you do all day.” (p. 221)

Final thought:  “We don’t have a talent shortage, we have a shipping shortage.” (p. 235) It’s time to ship more.

What We Can Do

Where to start?  There is so much talent at each of your workplaces.  Some of you are already linchpins, truly holding the wagon together.  Others are on the verge, but The Resistance is holding them back.  (The topic of pay in Higher Ed is a whole different blog post that could be pulled out of the thoughts in this book).

Maybe your employer isn’t ready for you to be a linchpin and create great things.  But once you’re creating (and making them look better), I’m sure they won’t mind.

If you want more out of your job, your life, and your paycheck, check this book out.  If you want to be inspired to try harder, to do better, and to accomplish more, read it.  If you’re content and complacent with where you are, this will certainly be a hard book for you to get through.  If you want to achieve your personal best and make the others around you better, you’ll definitely find some next steps for that out of this book.

The Giveaway

It’s pretty simple.  Leave a comment before Thursday 5pm EST and tell me about a linchpin that you know. It could be a co-worker, a twitter friend or colleague, a family member, a neighbor.  Tell me what makes them a linchpin, in your opinion, and what’s one thing that you can take away from how they do life.

I’ll ship the book Priority mail on Saturday AM, so if you’re in the US you’ll have it by next Tuesday or Wednesday, still a few days before the book hits the shelf.  I look forward to your responses!

Some questions you might ask before that you start that new project in 2010.

It’s always good to ask questions, both of yourself and others involved. It’ll likely make the project a little easier for you to implement and manage.

1. Is it realistic?
2. Do we have the staffing to manage it for long-term?
3. What is our goal for this? Are we chasing tools instead of goals? (hat tip to @howardkang)
4. Is this the right tool to make it happen?
5. What other projects and initiatives will have to sacrifice from the time I need to invest into the new project?
6. How many other schools/competitors are already doing this?
7. Can we do it better or differently from them?
8. Will I have the support I need to get it to a finished project?
9. How can I document the success of this for my boss?
10. Who could help me look at this with fresh eyes and give an alternative perspective?