Guest post by Mackenzie Fogelson
SEOmoz.com

Everybody is talking about content. And everybody’s writing content. Social media specialists, agencies, marketing departments, probably even your mom. And a lot of it isn’t pretty.

Hopefully, by now, you got the memo that if you want your content to grow your business, it should be good. And hopefully you’re ready to do something about it.

There is a very tiny yet very significant theme to keep in mind — a shift in perspective — that is important to embody when you’re generating content for your website, blog, and social media outlets (oh, and offline, too):

It’s not about you. It’s just not.

Even though you may be one of your company’s biggest fans, you are not your target audience. If you want to attract customers to your brand and your community, your content needs to reflect the fact that you understand your customer. That you’ve actually thought about and considered the challenges they face which make your product or service a necessity in their lives.

And you need to do all that without making it about you.

Try using foundational and community building content

In general, there are two types of content that you need on your website. We call them foundational content and community building content.

Foundational content is the important stuff that permanently lives on your website. It’s the inherently self-promotional stuff that explains who you are and what you do. It’s your about page, your sales pages (products or services), and it tends to be (but isn’t always) fairly static. Foundational content is the stuff that’s pretty much impossible not to make about you because it is, in fact, about you. As a result, in order to attract customers to your community with your foundational content, you’ve got to pack it full of value.

Community building content is less about what you do and more about what you know. It usually lives on your blog, is dynamic, and indirectly promotes your brand (and earns links). It’s what bolsters your online reputation as an expert. It builds trust, establishes credibility, and naturally attracts people to you. Community building content is most effective when it’s not self-promotional. It doesn’t need to say your company name. Instead, it needs to be completely focused on your customer and the value that you can provide or point them toward.

Patagonia is a good example of providing value in both types of content. Whether it’s foundational or community building, they focus on the customer, their needs, and the experience. Let’s take a look at some examples.

Packing value into foundational content

In Patagonia’s foundational content, they focus their message not just on how cool their product looks or even how functional it is (though they don’t hide those things), but also on the broader concerns of their target audience.

This is an email marketing promotion that my husband recently received about the Encapsil Parka:

Notice how instead of just bragging about the fact that this is the best down parka ever made (all about them), Patagonia is also going to show you what they mean by providing value through video (all about the customer).

If you click through to the video, the content boasts “how little is used” to make the jacket, something that is important to consumers who respect (and are drawn to) the Patagonia brand. Patagonia is balancing self-promotion with something that is useful and enhances the experience.

Even though Patagonia’s intention is to sell this product, they are committed to integrating value into their foundational content so that they are serving their customer. The page is also packed with additional videos, details, social proof, customer testimonials, and the opportunity to live chat. All. Kinds. Of. Value.

What community building content looks like

About a week later, my husband also received this email from Patagonia:

This is Tommy. He climbs rocks for a living. He’s a Patagonia Ambassador (that’s code for bad-ass rock climber).

This email marketing promotion clicks through to a post on the Patagonia blog about Tommy. Even though it lives on the Patagonia blog, it doesn’t plug Patagonia products, it doesn’t even link to any associated Patagonia rock climbing gear. It’s all about Tommy, his kind of scary adventures, and his drive to be a stand-up guy.

This is community building content — and it probably attracts a lot of links, too. It’s indirectly self-promotional. It speaks to the kind of people that Patagonia wants to attract to their community. My guess (and presumably Patagonia’s guess, too) is that people who like guys like Tommy resonate with what Patagonia stands for as a company and they want to be a part of what they’re doing (which means buy their products and join their community).

You can do this with a content strategy

You don’t have to be a ginormous brand like Patagonia to generate the kinds of content that will attract customers to your community. You just need to have a content strategy that will get you from where you are to where you’d like to be.

An ideal content strategy aligns the goals of your business with the expectations of your target audience. If you want to build a thriving community around your company, you’ve got to have a strategy that considers the people who are going to be reading your content and the experience that you want them to have.

The best place to start is with a content audit of your existing content. If you want to attract people to your community with your content, you’ve got to make it worth reading. That means over the first several months (and possibly beyond), you’re going to need to spend some time transforming what exists: improve what’s worth revising and ditch the rest.

Reworking your foundational content

When you’re auditing your foundational content, pay attention to whether it has any value or if it’s all about you. Certainly your content is going to be self-promotional (it is, after all, your website), but you can communicate what you do or sell and still be focused on the customer and their experience.

Even with your About or Policy pages, you can use creative ways to improve the experience and add more value. You should also put some thought into the following:

• Your why

  Have you figured out your why yet? Focus on your passion and what makes you unique in your space. Why are you different from your competition? What is it that you like to do? Get very clear about what you do well and why and then make that what you’re all about.
• Your customer

  Who exactly are you targeting? (Remember, the whole world is not your customer.) Develop a persona around them. Get to know your semi-fictional audience members and keep them in mind as you manipulate your content.
• Their challenges

  What challenges does your audience have? Define their pain points and then make sure your content addresses them.
• Where they’re coming from

  At what level in the conversion funnel might your customer be visiting this page? In order to provide the best experience possible, your content should reflect this.

Balance the “all about me” in your foundational content with the value that better serves your customer. Instead of having a page with a couple paragraphs of text and some bullets like this:

Supplement the textual information with things like video, blog posts, case studies, infographics, and testimonials:

Making these simple changes can make a big difference in your lift:

Integrating value into your foundational content is really about two things:

1. Satisfying user intent

   The purpose of your foundational content is to convert. If you don’t provide anything but a couple of paragraphs that give your 30 second elevator speech, you’ve just lost the opportunity for a sale.
2. User experience
   Making sure that you’re providing the best user experience and that it’s consistent across your website, blog, and social media outlets, as well as your offline efforts.

The more value you provide with your foundational content, the more desirable you become, the more trust you build, the more you appeal to the person who is on the other side of that search. Again, anything that is going to make it less about you and more about them.

The key is to balance all of your foundational content with some community building content and then you’ve won the internet.

The angle on community building content

First things first. Just because you have a blog doesn’t mean you always have to write about the stuff you sell (remember the 80/20 rule?). Same goes for your social media outlets. That gets old quick and can be pretty limiting in terms of the audience you can engage. It’s OK to promote your products or services on your blog, but work to keep that to 20% of the time.

Focus on developing community building content on your blog. It’s the powerhouse that can help you reach the objectives you have for your business, and also attract (the right) customers to your community. But again, same thing applies: lay off the self-promotion.

Community building content can be blog posts like this one from SimpliSafe or infographics like this one that SEOgadget lovingly created for one of their clients:

The bottom line with your community building content is that the focus needs to be on your customer. It’s not meant to directly promote your company. You want to generate content that indirectly communicates your strengths and illustrates your expertise and knowledge. If your customers can find alignment with what they’re searching for and the content you’re providing, chances are, they will be more inclined to not only be part of your community, but also purchase your products and services.

Before you write your community building content, consider things like:

• The goals of your (potential) customer
  You know what your goals are for your business, but what about the goals of your target audience? What are their intentions with your content?
• Depth in your content
  What can you help them learn or better understand? Can you change their mind about an industry misconception or challenge their beliefs on a particular subject?
• Satisfying a need
  How can you serve their needs? Can you provide advice, ideas, instructions, suggestions, a guide? Your goal is to focus on providing quality content that that people really want (and are searching for).

As you’re creating community building content, consider following the 70/20/10 principle like Ian Lurie, Tom Cruise, and the dude from Coke do.

The basic gist is within your content strategy should look like this: 70% of your content should be a mix of mainstream stuff (knowledge, advice, and how-to type content); 20% goes along the same lines as the 70%, but with a little risk taking (controversial or attempting to attract a new audience); and 10% is the super cool stuff that may completely bomb but showcases your innovative side.

The thing about this approach is that it will help you to challenge the direction of your community building content so that you avoid just creating the same kind of stuff over and over (which will provide a more exciting experience for your users). It will both satisfy your existing customers and community members and attract new people who resonate with what you’re putting out there.

Even more importantly, the 70/20/10 principle will push who you are as a company which is really important when you’re growing a community. Your community building content needs to make a statement about your brand, showing your community what you’re capable of and what you believe in. All stuff that will attract them to you (and keep them there).

Some final pointers

Three final things to keep in mind:

1. There is no magic formula
   It’s really important to have a content strategy that will assist you in working toward goals for your business. And it’s also really important that you create an execution plan that will help translate all of the stuff you want to accomplish into actionable, chewable pieces. But keep in mind that there is no magic number of posts that will attract customers to your business and your community. It’s the quality of your business, your content, and you. As you work to develop strong content, keep in mind that this is an ongoing process that involves constant iteration. Don’t plan an execution calendar for any longer than a few months. Let your strategy drive, but listen to your content. Allow the freedom to be agile and change course based on what happens when your content is actually released.
2. Bring it back to your goals

   Allow your content to take you on unexpected journeys. Be open to new ideas, consider the feedback you’re getting in blog comments and from people who provide input in real life. If a topic in your strategy suddenly becomes urgent, move it up in your execution plan. Be flexible. Just always make sure that you bring it back to your goals. 

When you ensure that your content is always in alignment with your business objectives and what your customers need, you’re clearing the noise. You’re staying focused on producing what’s important which helps to reduce anxiety, workload, and keeps you on track.
3. Good content is an investment in your business
   Quality content is an asset that builds value in your business. Whether it’s a blog post, guide, whitepaper, case study, infographic, or video, your content is going to attract people to your business and your community (ongoing). Creating content that’s valuable is not always a quick and easy task. Whether you’re committing to this for your own business or you’re an agency assisting a client with content, it’s going to take some time. Start small. We’ve found with our clients that committing to two small (quality) posts a month is a realistic frequency, but it really depends on your goals and your strategy. If you’re developing content that’s more extensive like an in-depth guide or an infographic, reduce the frequency that month. Instead of spreading yourself thin on two, put all of your energy into one heavy hitter and give it the attention it deserves. After all, it’s an investment in your business.

Your content is meant to serve a purpose

Building and growing a community around your business can be done with an investment in a good strategy, content, outreach, and a lot of hard work. But keep in mind that your content isn’t just meant to rank, it’s intended to serve a purpose. Draw people in with your community building content, and then pack your foundational content so full of value that making the sale is the natural next step.

What interesting ways are you integrating value into your content, or have you seen other companies doing? I’d love for you to share your experiences in the comments below.

Related

• The power of content marketing for business (Socialmedia.biz)

• Lean content marketing: How to do it right (Socialmedia.biz)

• How to establish thought leadership for your nonprofit — start with content marketing (Socialbrite)

Make sure you do more than throw numbers at readers

Target audience: Businesses, infographics specialists, marketing professionals, designers.

Ilove infographics. And I love storytelling. But rarely do the two meet in any meaningful way.

So I couldn’t resist the chance to share a new infographic from one of Socialmedia.biz’s clients, Charles Schwab. When Schwab hired us to create a series of infographics for the company, we spent considerable time developing a storyboard that was mindful of their brand while conveying a message that was as much about people and behavior instead of just numbers and data.

Charles Schwab’s first infographic, The Road to Retirement (also see their Facebook page), focuses on a simple idea: the power of starting to invest early in life. So we thought it would make an interesting infographic story to start with Julia and Justin, two people in their 20s, and take them through their 40s and 60s. That way, any readers can compare themselves to where these two individuals are at the same age — and then think about their own saving habits.

Click on the image to see it at full size:

It’s a big unconventional in that it’s not jam-packed with numbers and focuses on a narrative. But there are enough data points, drawn from Schwab’s Center for Financial Research (SCFR), Schwab’s Retirement Calculator and a trusted third party, an AARP member survey, to make it work. And the main point of contrasting someone’s retirement savings who started saving at age 23, vs. someone who waited until age 40 to start, makes the point of the infographic pretty apparent. (Kudos to Kelsey and Charles of Space Chimp Media for bringing it to life visually.)

Do you think this works? Have you seen other examples of infographics that tell a story? Please share in the comments!

Related

• 10 top tools for creating infographics & visualizations (Socialmedia.biz)
JD Lasica is founder of Socialmedia.biz. We work with large and mid-size businesses and organizations on social media strategies and optimizing your online presence. Contact JD by email, follow him on Twitter and Google Plus or leave a comment below.

Insightly, SugarCRM, Nimble, Zoho CRM lead way

Guest post by Megan Totka
Chief Editor, ChamberofCommerce.com

At some point, a growing small or medium-size business comes face to face with a basic question: How do we manage our relationships with our customers?

By using customer relationship management (CRM) software, a business owner can track customers’ shopping and buying habits, information about new prospects, sales, vendors, past interactions via social media and more. A good CRM system organizes all this information and makes it easily accessible, allowing team members to work more efficiently and productively.

CRM software was once reserved for corporations and enterprise-level businesses that had access to the technology — and the resources to use it. But as more software vendors have developed CRM platforms, adding features and honing both functionality and integration, this powerful business tool has been refined into versions easier to use and more affordable for companies of all sizes.

Today, there are many CRM solutions designed especially with small businesses in mind.

Insightly: Integrates with Gmail & Google apps

1The small business CRM system Insightly packs a lot of powerful features into an extremely affordable package that integrates fully with Google’s increasingly popular Gmail and suite of Google apps. Its project management tools — which include conversation histories, customer profiles and a data management suite that associates email attachments with users and related projects — are well developed and intuitive. The flexible calendar system allows users to add, update and share meetings and events with ease. With on-the-fly customization, users can add custom fields and filters to suit their display preferences. A built-in notification system keeps everyone up to date, and with mobile apps for iOS and Android, this platform is ideal for remote workers who need access from anywhere. Insightly also includes social media integration with Twitter.

Cost: The basic service is free for up to three users, and business owners who select additional features, users and storage can expect to pay about $5 per user per month with paid levels of service beginning at $29 for 4-6 users per month.

SugarCRM: Open source solution does a lot out of the box

2 Sugar, an open source CRM application, can be customized to meet even the most particular needs of a small business. The system supports sales, marketing, customer service, email, calendar, conferencing and project management right out of the box. It also integrates fully with the WordPress platform and popular social media sites. The Sugar community has already built some extensions and created new integrations that users can leverage to expand their data management and customer outreach toolkit. As an optional upgrade, SugarCRM also offers versions for mobile phones and tablets.

Cost: The price is a bit steep starting at $35 per user per month, but if your business needs an extensive, robust CRM platform and has the IT staff to support customization efforts, Sugar may be the smart choice.

Nimble: Addresses your ‘social listening’ needs

3With an emphasis on social CRM (SCRM), Nimble delivers a feature-rich experience at an affordable price. The platform uses a familiar, social-media-style interface that integrates with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more to provide a unified stream of your CRM information in the social sphere. Nimble’s feature set also includes sales and marketing tools, activity management with calendar import and sync, a “social listening” feature that allows users to set search parameters for terms that appear in the Twitter and Facebook streams, and app add-ons for extended features like lead capture and analytics.

Cost: Users who like what they see after trying a free personal account can upgrade to a business plans priced at $15 per user per month.

Zoho CRM: Free version is a strong choice

4A healthy feature set and excellent pricing options including a free version for up to three users makes Zoho CRM a strong choice for small business. Some of the tools that come with Zoho’s free version are social CRM integration, reports and dashboards, and lead and contact management. Paid versions include features like sales forecasting, marketing and workflow automation, and advanced CRM analytics.

Cost: The professional level Zoho plan is $12 per user per month, while the enterprise level runs $25 per user per month.

Prophet: Integrated with Microsoft apps

5Avidian Prophet offers all of the core tools and functions you’d expect from a modern CRM platform. Integrating closely with Microsoft applications, it offers Outlook users an interface that focuses more on familiarity and user-friendliness than powerful, nuanced features. And because its functionality is tied so intimately into that of Outlook (some functions even require the use of a Microsoft Exchange Server), it may have a bit of a steeper learning curve for those who aren’t already using Microsoft’s office suite.

Cost: The hosted cost of Prophet starts at $45 per user per month or can be set up on a local server for a one-time charge of $500 per user.

With such a wide range of pricing and available features, choosing a CRM platform is about so much more than which system has the lowest price tag. The total cost of any CRM solution isn’t always reflected in the up-front fee, and it’s worth your time and energy to determine which system has the right balance of features and affordability that best fits your business. Choosing the right system for your business lets you tackle customer relationship management in a new way and take your business to the next level.

Yes. In fact, you must. Just don’t go on social auto-pilot and start collecting people

You know how much I am obsessed with long-tail blogger outreach, right? I am a man possessed! That said, I really don’t collect people. People don’t like being collected. As people, we don’t like being part of a menagerie. While it’s easy to collect people, it’s even easier to take them for granted, and there’s probably a tipping point. I have been consulting some bouncing social media babies recently, and they’re doing it right. They’re each running a couple of hundred followers and friends and they know everyone. They’re aware of exactly who they’re following and get really excited whenever anyone follows them back.

But please forgive me, I felt the same way too, and I must tell you that I really needed the reminder. I mean, not to brag, but I have had 500+ connections on LinkedIn since before many of you were born. And with 43,000+ followers on Twitter and 4,777 friends on Facebook, it keeps me busy.

With such a torrent of conversation splashing and sloshing around me all the time, manifesting in an endless din, I of course am just about always overwhelmed.

It’s almost impossible to both maintain the cultivated intimacy of those very first days of exploration when you knew the name of everyone you followed and, especially, everyone who followed you.

And, for your good words, your good message, your brilliance and genius to make its mark, you have to build an audience.

There’s the rub. While your followers and friends will probably not lose their attachment to you — in fact, their attachment might grow as they spend more time with your voice, your words, your wit, and your wisdom — you’ll get overwhelmed, too, just like I did.

People don’t like being collected

Honestly, I don’t know if I have done a very good job of it myself. I have tried to create Twitter lists and keep connected, but it’s not easy. It’s also not easy when people, over time, know you more than you can know them — even on Facebook.

Always remember, people don’t like being collected.

Do your best to not allow your burgeoning social media empire to go on autopilot. While it’s virtually impossible to keep up with so many people (unless you keep the number of people you follow to a severe minimum or limit your engagement with people you don’t personally know on Facebook to just followers and not friends), that doesn’t mean you can’t keep up with any of them.

Pay attention to your networks

At the very minimum, you’ll need to pay attention. You’ll need to listen. You’ll need to participate with everyone.

At replies (@replies), direct messages (DMs), and third-party mentions. Plus, you need to engage with generosity of spirit and patience. You’ll need to engage with everyone who engages with you with as much personal touch and attention as you would someone you already know — with the understanding that you’re only being damned with your success.

Were it not for your success building your brand and reputation online, you wouldn’t have this problem, would you?

There’s an amazing book by Anne Lamott called Bird by Bird. It’s a book about writing that suggests that no matter how overwhelming the Herculean task before you, you can reduce it to simple steps. In the case of the book, a 10-year-old boy was freaking out about a book report about birds:

“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’”

Bird by bird, follower by follower, friend by friend.

People don’t like being collected but people really hate being dismissed.

Engaging right up through the tens of thousands

The beautiful secret about being present, being well-engaged with your followership as you develop the sort of following that extends into the thousands and tens of thousands, is that outside of private messages, engaging openly and honestly with people publicly and before others is an outstanding way of shaking hands and kissing babies while the cameras are on.

However, that’s just a way of expanding and deepening perceived intimacy online; a way of spending quality time with one person publicly so as to show humor, humility, kindness, and attention to everyone else.

But you know, now or even before, that people don’t like being collected, people hate being dismissed, and people resent being trifled with, so you’ll make a business of engaging pleasantly with everyone who comes to your door, no matter how casual the encounter, no matter how modest their pedigree, and no matter how non-existent their Klout.

Remember, every day, that you don’t have to do any of this. You need to neither collect thousands of people nor need to maintain a simple cadre of real people you’ve met in real life. It depends on what you want. Do you want access and influence or do you want relationship and intimacy — or some degree of both?

Whether you’re rocking a few hundred or a few thousand followers on Twitter or 38 million like Justin Bieber, people know that. They understand you’re busy. They know you’re probably torn in two by your schedule. That said, remember that this relationship must be a relationship of mutual respect: Do you thank people for their retweets? For being mentioned in a #FollowFriday?

Are you responsive enough to take the time to brandish your virtual Sharpie to sign autographs? To smile sweetly as you’re immortalized in a virtual mugshot-with-a-star?

You don’t need to engage every day with every one of your 1,000, 5,000, 10,000, or 100,000 followers: Remember, bird by bird, friend by friend.

Chris Abraham is a partner in Socialmedia.biz. Contact Chris via email, follow him on Twitter and Google Plus or leave a comment below.

Boomerang, TimeBridge, AwayFind & much more

A couple of years ago, I wrote a post on the five productivity tools I found myself using frequently. Since times change, and apps/platforms come and go, I thought I’d take a fresh look at how my daily toolkit has changed, and share that with you.

Note that I use Gmail almost exclusively, so if that’s you, you’re in luck. If not, well, you’ll have to see if they work for your particular set-up. Here, then, are 20 tools to help you grow your business, by keeping you efficient, productive and in the know.

Email, contacts and calendar/scheduling tools

1Boomerang for Gmail: I still use and love it. Boomerang is a great way to schedule emails ahead of time so that you can clear your backlog, or take care of responses, but not look like a crazy person who is up all hours of the day and night (even if you are, there’s no need to show it). It works as a Firefox and Chrome plug-in and there’s also a version for Outlook. See the video above for the inside scoop.

2 Boomerang Calendar: Also part of the Baydin (Boomerang’s dad) family, BC is a newer addition to the Boomerang suite. Basically it helps you schedule meetings right in your Google calendar, by detecting (usually quite accurately) times being discussed via email. I don’t really use it all that much, but it’s handy to have.

3 TimeBridge: Now that my beloved Tungle is a thing of the past, what I do like to use for scheduling is TimeBridge. I love my personalized meeting URL, and I much prefer TimeBridge to some of the alternatives, like vCita or Doodle. But I’m not ruling out a change in the future — vCita especially, since it has some pretty neat features.

4 AwayFind: AwayFind sends auto-responders to anyone who emails you, relaying a message. Usually it’s something like, “I’m really busy working on client work, so don’t freak out if you don’t hear from me immediately.” And you can let them know how to contact you if it’s urgent. You can also set certain people as “important,” and AwayFind notifies you when they, and only they, email you. So it literally “finds” you when you’re “away,” and hacks away the shackles binding you to your email. (Founded by my friend Jared Goralnick.)

5 Soocial: Soocial is a really nice online address book, and something I prefer greatly to Plaxo, which is what I used to use, until it decided it wanted to be something other than Plaxo. I love that it syncs between multiple sources (it has a complete list on its site), which helps avoid dupes.

6Write That Name: Write That Name automagically detects contact info from the emails you receive and adds them to your address book. I’m not using all the features, like its multi-account feature, simply because I haven’t had the time to play around with it enough, so there’s lots for you to look at. And if you decide to sign up — there are free and paid versions — please use this link, because then I get credits on their “thanks barometer” … and who wouldn’t want that? They also have really good customer service.

Time tracking and invoicing

7 Harvest: I was a huge Toggl fan, but since I was introduced to Harvest as a go-to time tracking and invoicing tool, I haven’t looked back. I use it to track time for pretty much every business-related that I do, and I love its invoicing and other features as well.

New business and relationship management

That just doesn’t sound right, does it? The thing is, business depends on relationships, so when you have tools that help you grow your relationships, they can also help you grow your business. Now please don’t go around thinking I’m saying you can automate relationship-building. You can’t. But you can keep track of who you meet, what’s going on with them, etc.

8 Newsle: Many thanks to my friend Derek Skaletsky of Traackr for turning me onto this. Newsle syncs with your social networks, and then sends you an email when any of your contacts are “in the news.” Remember how Gist used to work? This is like that, though it’s actually neater and cleaner (I used to have a lot of trouble syncing Gist). So with Newsle, you can send a congratulatory note, post to their Facebook wall, etc., when they are quoted in a cool way. Good for us all, great for those of us who like to schmooze up to others.

9Streak: I wrote a pretty extensive post not that long ago aboutwhy I love Streak as a CRM plug-in for Gmail. Especially if you are a micro-business owner, like myself, you want to look into this. It works great, and it’s free. What’s not to love?

Honorable mention: Rapportive, which would give you a snapshot of whoever you were emailing, including their last few tweets and links to their LinkedIn profiles, etc. Unfortunately, since Gmail has switched everyone over to the new “Compose,” it doesn’t work as well as it used to, even though I’ve seen posts saying there is a workaround (I’ve tried, and it doesn’t work for me). If Rapportive figures out a workaround, it will make a lot of people happy.

News

10 theSkimm: I stumbled on this via a post Mark Drapeau wrote a while back. At the time I felt even more overwhelmed by trying to keep multiple balls in the air, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to subscribe. Since then, I’ve become mildly addicted to it. And while I still try to read my daily newspaper (albeit on my iPhone or iPad) and go through my Feedly — I decided I might as well get used to it since Google Reader is going away — I enjoy theSkimm’s take on current events for the most part.

I especially like that if don’t have time to read up on everything that’s going on (honestly, who does?), I can quickly skim through the email and feel somewhat intelligent. Be warned; if you don’t appreciate being talked to in a “Sex and the City” tone of voice, you probably won’t like it. But if you’re curious enough to check it out, please use this link since it may get me a free Starbucks gift card or something.

Content curation & social media management

11 Feedly: We all went through Google Reader withdrawal and started looking around frantically for an alternative. I’d signed up for Feedly a while back, and have just started using that as my RSS reader of choice. I love that it integrated Buffer a while back, and it’s a great way for me to go through my favorite blogs fairly quickly, curate and share what I like, and then save what I want for later.

12 – 14 Buffer, HootSuite and Post Planner: I wrote about these a while back and they’re still as good as ever — in fact, better. I recently tweaked my Buffer settings and am currently using it to share content primarily to Twitter and LinkedIn. I still love HootSuite for multi-account and platform management (even more useful now that I have a virtual assistant). And Post Planner is my go-to tool for scheduling to Facebook post.

15 Triberr: I’ve been using Triberr for a couple of years now and am enjoying getting to know Dino Dogan, the founder, better. He’s a terrific guy and has great passion for what he does. I struggle a little bit with the pressure to keep up with all my tribes, but that’s my problem, not Triberr’s. And it does make curation very easy.

16 Do Share for Google+: This is a nifty Chrome extension that lets you schedule posts to Google Plus. It started out a little clunky, but has improved considerably. If you’re still trying to figure out how curation to Plus fits into your life, definitely check it out.

Voice and video

17 Join.me: Karelyn, my virtual assistant, introduced me to this. I was on a Skype chat with my mom a few weeks ago, and realized I could no longer share my screen (unless I wanted to up my Skype subscription to a premium one, and I don’t see any reason to do that). That’s what Join.me lets you do, and it’s free. Can’t argue with that.

18 FreeConference: I want to say Free Conference Call was one of the first services of its kind, but I’m sure someone will read me the riot act if I do. So I’ll just say that it’s been around a while, and it still works great.

19 Speek: A much newer conferencing service, this dispenses with a bridge line, PIN, etc. Instead, you just give those calling in your personalized Speek URL and when it’s time for the call, they visit the URL and Speek calls them. There apparently is no charge for the service, though I assume you’ll pay normal telephone charges. Currently it’s available in the United States, though those abroad can join via their computer.

20 MobileDay: MobileDay is a neat iPhone and Android app that syncs with your calendar and dials into conference calls for you. It also integrates with Salesforce, so it could help you save time there.

These are the programs, extensions, plug-ins and apps that I currently find most useful. What about you – what are your tech and efficiency solutions? Do share, I’d love to know!

Shonali Burke, a partner in Socialmedia.biz, specializes in measurable social PR for corporations and nonprofits. Contact Shonali via email or follow her on Twitter and Google Plus.

9 ways to leverage the power of LinkedIn

Guest post by Cara Aley

The right digital marketing strategy is important for every new business. Many new business owners focus their efforts mostly on Facebook and Twitter and overlook how useful LinkedIn can be in the launch and building of awareness for their businesses.

Below you’ll find multiple ways in which you can use this powerful networking website to help successfully promote your new business.

Create a profile for better SEO

1LinkedIn is one of the more search engine optimized websites. Simply creating a profile on LinkedIn for your business will ensure that it is pretty quickly one of the first links people will see when they search for your business (this is good for both SEO and reputation management, pushing other links down further in search results).

In creating your profile on LinkedIn, you can provide a company description, a separate product description page, and other links (including one to your website). Use keywords in your company and product descriptions to ensure SEO opportunities.

Let recommendations speak for you

2Ask people to recommend your product or service. On the Products page (or Services if that is what you provide), ask people to recommend you. If you are launching a social enterprise, people will more than likely be happy to share their positive feedback about the good you are doing. Not only will the networks of those recommending you see this (the viral effect at work), but so will those visiting your company profile on LinkedIn.

Your employees are your ambassadors

3Have your employees indicate their work for your company on their profiles. Both you and your employees should be sure to indicate that you work for the company in your LinkedIn profiles. This will increase the exposure of the company – as your connections see you and employees “joining” the company, many will naturally be curious to review the company profile.

Share company news

4Post to the feed as your company to promote your business. LinkedIn has a feed just like Twitter and Facebook. Take this opportunity to post to the feed and share news about your business, relevant industry news, and product or service updates. Anyone connected to your business may see this and share it via Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks. Ask your employees to do just that!

Promote your business personally

5You can do this as can your employees – share information about your business launching, point to your company’s profile on LinkedIn, and ask people to share the great news about your launch!

Connect with other professionals

6Make sure your company network is strong. Connect with relevant professionals who support what you are doing and whose networks could be of value to you. When these individuals connect with you, it will be apparent to their own networks, who might show interest.

Join relevant groups

7Joining groups that are related to social enterprise and your specific area of focus winds up being a great way to create an awareness of your company, and to connect with relevant individuals and businesses.

Post jobs

8Have job openings? LinkedIn is a great place to find candidates and create awareness of your business by posting job opportunities. Showing that you are hiring is a very positive sign for the growth of your business – people will be impressed to see this. You will likely make many new, relevant connections simply in the posting of a job opportunity.

Post a video

9This is another great way to create awareness for what your business is doing, enhance your profile, and provide something that others can share that could go viral. Utilize testimonials from customers and people you are helping with your business. Take the time to share why you are doing what you are doing, and the social good that will come of it.

In short, LinkedIn should not be underestimated for the incredible power it holds in helping to launch your new business. People will expect that you have a profile on LinkedIn at a minimum – but there is an incredible amount of power in leveraging LinkedIn from a promotional standpoint.

How has LinkedIn helped you with your business development and marketing efforts? We want to hear!

Related

• Socialmedia.biz articles on LinkedIn

New social tool helps agencies, businesses mine verticals for the big kahunas

Target audience: Businesses, brands, digital marketers, advertising agencies, SEO specialists, entrepreneurs, educators, journalists, Web publishers.

If you know how social media marketing works, then you know that social has changed the rules of marketing. It’s no longer about targeting a desired demographic and then bombarding that audience with one-way commercial messages. Madison Avenue and Don Draper live on in the form of mass marketing, but social marketing has transformed how we share commercial messages.

In this new world, we create content, stories and shareable objects that people will find valuable and may want to share on their social networks. We try to build a community so that we can engage in a conversation that will eventually spur them to become evangelists or ambassadors for our brand. And we run campaigns that enlist their help in getting out the word about a new product, service, cause or idea.

But there’s always been a missing piece of the puzzle: Identifying your most ardent fans has been a painstaking process. Small or mid-size businesses and organizations either do it manually, through the use of Twitter and Google Analytics combined with inputting their names and social handles into a spreadsheets or Google doc, or they throw up their hands at such a daunting undertaking. Organizations with a budget and more resources dabble with a bevy of Social Customer Relationship Management (sCRM) tools or social media dashboards or social search engines or digital campaign platforms. (See my writeup on SocialToaster.) Tools like Sprout Social, Nimble, Traackr, Klout and SocialMention get you part of the way there — but only part way. (SmallAct’s SocialVision, due to launch next month, is geared to tracking brand influencers and potential donors in the nonprofit sector.)

Little Bird could be a game changer for tracking social influencers

Marshall Kirkpatrick, CEO/co-founder of Little Bird: “We can deliver you right to the top of the mountain.”

Now along comes a new player on the scene whose goal is to provide that missing piece of the puzzle: Little Bird. The brainchild of Marshall Kirkpatrick, an entrepreneur/data journalist/technologist who was co-editor at ReadWriteWeb, Little Bird has been in closed beta since October with an exclusive focus on Twitter. But today the site is spreading its wings (sorry!) by expanding to include Facebook, Google Plus and LinkedIn. It’s still in private beta but the invitation wait time is very short.

Think of it as a way to roll your own army of supporters. “The ultimate vision is that anybody will be able to convene a circle of experts in their field: product design, nutritionists, ceramicists,” Marshall told me. “We can deliver you right to the top of the mountain to begin your engagement to save you the grind of the heavy lifting.”

The top of the mountain being the rugged mountaineers who have slogged to the social media summit and become the top influencers in their sectors. Similar in some ways to how Google’s Page Rank looks for linkbacks to web pages to determine credibility and relevancy, the Little Bird engine analyzes the connections between people to determine who has the most juice in a particular community or on a specific topic.

Speaking of mountaintops … it’s all about the verticals

I tried Little Bird and was immediately impressed by how it sized up the top influencers in the cruise lines industry on Twitter (I’m working on a cruise startup). For social media marketers and public relations professionals, Little Bird offers special appeal, saving us countless hours of assessing who are the folks worth paying attention to — not just at the summit but far down the mountaintop as well.

But Little Bird holds much wider appeal. Don’t know if that fellow sitting in front of you in a job interview is all that? Suss him out on Little Bird — and see which of the influencers in his field are following him.

If you’re a journalist, you may want to know the top 15 experts in the field of water conservation.

If you run a tech conference series, you’ll use Little Bird to see who the most influential people are in startups when you’re visiting a new city.

If this reminds you a bit of Klout, that’s OK. Influence is hot right now. But there are important differences. Klout is an axe, Little Bird is a scalpel. While Klout is about overall online popularity and clout, whatever that is, Little Bird is not about inducing people to pass along corporate messages to mass audiences. It’s more about discovering the people whose opinions matter in a particular niche or vertical.

“This is tool to build relationships and foster a deeper way to engage with people, not another way to spam people,” Marshall said. “It’s also a way to relate to the world. In a way we’re acting as corporate organizational librarians. … There’s mind expanding, business expanding value waiting to be tapped inside the conversation structure.” Very Kirkpatrickian.

Here’s a short video of Marshall introducing the service:

Introducing Little BIrd from getlittlebird on Vimeo.

A bit pricey, but worth it

OK, final details: Yes, it’s a bit pricey, so you’ll need to gauge whether it’s worth your investment. Little Bird costs $50/month for individuals (up to five reports), $250/month for small businesses, $500/month for mid-size businesses, $1,000/month for businesses with 101 to 500 employees and contract prices for enterprises.

I haven’t tried all the features yet, but there are a sweet set of options beyond running reports. For those of us tired of the firehose, Little Bird is a welcome relief.

Little Bird is still a tad rough around some of the edges, as with any new service, but with Marshall helm his nine-person team, you can bet that Little Bird’s forays into online influencers will only get better and better. Search is becoming more social, and Little Bird is one of the companies leading the way.

Related

• Fast Company: Would you pay to discover social influencers?

• Wired: A Robot Librarian for the Social Web

• AdWeek: Little Bird Lands $1M Wieden + Kennedy-incubated startup helps identify subject-specific influencers

• Fast Company: If you’re interested in influence, social scoring is of historic importance JD Lasica is founder of Socialmedia.biz. We work with large and mid-size businesses and organizations on social media strategies and optimizing your online presence. Contact JD by email, follow him on Twitter and Google Plus or leave a comment below.

Discover and engage your allies with long-tail blogger outreach

The current catch-all these days for what I do is ‘social media’. Unfortunately, when what you do is described as such, people tend to think Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and maybe Google+. My expertise, however, is online community outreach and engagement. Back in 2006, I developed a strategy of blogger outreach that allowed me to reach out to more than just 25 top-tier bloggers by hand but to 2,500-5,000 bloggers.

I have always called this long-tail blogger outreach — though I would love your help with choosing a new name for it — because it focuses on the B-Z-list bloggers, the online influencers who are often overlooked by most social media teams at digital agencies.

While I agree that the top-25-50 bloggers do deserve deep, long-term, and personal engagement, spending that sort of time, over time, on “everyone else” would take all the time in the universe. So, what my team and I developed is the equivalent of blogger-brand speed dating.

The ins and outs of mass outreach

After identifying 2,000-4,000 blogs that are topically, geographically, or demographically on target, preparing a content-laden microsite and penning a very short-and-sweet email message pitch, then I send out those 2K-4K emails, each and every one a speed date, and wait at the inbox.

Before long, hundreds of email replies stream in. Some aren’t interested, some are game, and others are curious but need more information. Like speed dating, we’re not interested in the no’s but we’re interested in the yeses.

Of course, we’re courteous and we’re present and we’re always kind — “hugs not horns” I always remind my team — and we’re never anything but earnest and polite — “be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle” — but if they’re not interested, we don’t contact them again. And if they’re very unhappy, we’ll beg their pardon and put them into a Do Not Contact list; otherwise, everyone who replies is taken off the campaign list.

The secret sauce, however, is that this form of speed dating requires email — and email is unreliable. And people are suspicious and busy. And email sometimes doesn’t quite make its way to the Inbox.

So, a week after the initial email outreach, I send a reminder email, but only to those bloggers who didn’t reply at all. No reply results in a follow-up email.

And it works. Too many practitioners of blogger outreach, email marketing, email outreaches, or even triple-, double-, and single-opt-in mailing lists are just too shy, too feeble in their messaging, for fear that they’ll get hundreds or thousands drinks-in-the-face. Nope, not if you do it right.

If you do it right, you’ll get twice the response you did from your first email. So, for instance, let’s say we emailed 4,000 bloggers and a 1,000 bloggers responded. 250 would have responded to the first email outreach, 500 would have responded to the second outreach, and then 250 would have responded to the final outreach.

Yes, a week after we mail the first follow-up email, we send out a final follow-up and thank you, thanking the blogger (who has yet to email us or reply at all — pretty much radio silent) for his or her time, apologizing for the inconvenience, and also to let the blogger know that he or she is welcome to take advantage of the opportunity when and if he or she gets around to reading and responding to the campaign pitch.

Be respectful and gracious

Our rule is to always be friendly, loving, generous, happy, kind, and even respectfully playful with each and every blogger, even the Grumpy Cats. Never rise to the bait, never fight fire with fire, never engage in snark/irony/sarcasm because the only person who is allowed to be anything but completely charming and gracious is the blogger.

Again, “be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle” — our mantra.

And you know what? If we do everything right, we’ll generally earn a couple of hundred earned media mentions directly shared on the bloggers’ blogs. We’ll also earn secondary mentions through Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Tumblr, Google+, digg, and reddit.

If you want to learn more, feel free to take a look at this blogger outreach deck I created for my friends at Sage over on Slideshare.

Blogger engagement as a strategy to reach new influencers

Blogger outreach and engagement is much more than social media. It could be seen as content marketing, yes, but it could and should be a communications strategy toward discovering and prospecting new and future influencers.

If you can identify a passion player — someone who is already talking about you, your products and services — and you can woo them into becoming citizen brand ambassadors, then you’ll be able to develop a very large pack of proponents and passion players who will be loyal and will have safely imprinted on your attention, your acknowledgement, and your generosity. To be sure, it’s much easier to prospect for new fans when these fans haven’t been wooed by another than it is to woo them away from a secure brand attachment.

And, to be honest, every single blogger anywhere close to the top-50 has already been spoken for in a big way. Generally-speaking, their brand sugardaddies probably have deeper-pockets and are internationally more prestigious that you may well be so it behooves you to play blogger moneyball. Find a large number of very talented bloggers who can personally assist you in your branding goals and bottom-line rather than spending your time and money on a few outrageously-compensated stars, most of whom are too busy and too distracted by an embarrassment of riches to actually give you all the time, attention, and coverage that you, your brand, your products, and your services deserve.

And remember, if you do all of this right, it’ll all be an earned media campaign, meaning you won’t have to pay each and every one of these bloggers to post, to cover, to review, or to promote. That’s not to say this’ll all be free to you — all of this can be expensive, both in terms of client service agency hours as well as in terms of the give, the gift you pitch the blogger with, be it informational, a product, or a service. And you need to make it good. Unless it’s an offer that can’t be refused — give till it hurts — and you just expect a blogger to blog about you “just because,” then you’ll always be disappointed.

Remember: The blogger is always right

As you can tell from my mantra, the blogger is always right. The bloggers have all the leverage. If you don’t make good on your generous offer, each and every blogger has recourse — and we knew they did — and it’s their blog! Plus, their tweets and Facebook posts and their Tumblr and Pinterest and reddit and everywhere else.

So, long-tail blogger outreach is an amazing platform to both discover and engage with a multitude of natural allies and the people who are already talking about you, and giving them all the tools, the copy, the content, the gifts, and the impetus to share information about you all over the Internet (an entire campaign only takes around six-weeks, total). It also allows you to harvest all of the bloggers game enough to mention you and your goodies into your inner-most where you can personally grow your relationship with them now and groom them into the future.

Clearly I had a lot to share. Do you consider what I am doing with blogger outreach to be “social media”? What do you think about the discipline? What about the concept of flirting with bloggers en masse and engaging with them in a very quick “yes/no” speed-dating scenario? Do you think it is worthwhile to reach out to thousands of bloggers — all the way down to “nobody” — instead or in addition to the top blogger celebrities? Let me know what you think in the comments. I am very curious to hear from you and would love to tweak my methods. Thanks in advance!

Related

Here are some links to additional posts I have made about blogger outreach in the past:

• Become a big fish by starting in a smaller pond
• Detailed analysis of the perfect blogger pitch
• The Long Tail strategy for AdWords works for blogger outreach
• Chris Abraham on Pitching Bloggers
• The quantum method of reaching out to bloggers
• Long-Tail Blogger Outreach Campaign Execution

Chris Abraham is a partner in Socialmedia.biz. Contact Chris via email, follow him on Twitter and Google Plus or leave a comment below.

Overseas projects to focus on mobile, data, art & journalism

On Monday I’ll be heading to Stanford University to help judge News Pioneers: Media innovations from Europe.

The participating teams are in different stages in their projects or start-ups. A few already have a working product and a growing customer base. Most, however, are just at the starting point in their development work. Stanford is bringing in a number of new media veterans to offer feedback and guidance to the teams about how to develop their project with innovative new media approaches. I’ll be looking forward to hearing more about each of these interesting efforts.

Nearhood: Helping local communities to flourish

1The founders of Nearhood believe that local is the next big trend in globalized world. But today digital services for local communities are still underdeveloped. Nearhood collects together locally relevant information to be easily accessible by local residents, creates a social platform which strengthens local communities and opens new, efficient and real-time marketing and sales channel for locally operating businesses. The Finnish startup aggregates local information using both volunteer editors and machine intelligence. They say, “By opening our platform to other services, we aim to create an ecosystem of local digital and physical services. Local isn’t just about discussions, it is also about services.” Practical. I like that.

OnDisplay: A weekly dose of art with a social layer

2OnDisplay is a mobile gallery aimed at creating a new forum for art criticism. It combines art journalism, art education and audio guide into an application that is simple to maintain and easy to use. It offers reviews of individual works of art hand-picked by professional critics. In addition to written articles, the application lets users view the artwork and listen to an audio guide specially produced for each work. The location and visitor information are also available through the OnDisplay interface. The first phase of the project creates the mobile application in cooperation with the local critics, galleries and museums in Helsinki. The second phase will open the application for user-generated content, developing the portal of arts criticism into a social media of visual arts. There are thousands of artworks displayed annually in Helsinki, and OnDisplay wants to find and display the works that may change your life.

Pallopostia: A news service for children

3The Pallopostia project aims to create an open, safe, free, easily accessible digital news service for children ages 6-17. Accessible via mobile devices such as tablets and touch-screen-phones, Pallopostia will bring the world closer to children in small, discrete pieces. At its best, it will help children in building their identity and self-esteem. It will serve all children in Finland and eventually it can be launched in other countries as well.

Infogr.am: New tool for data journalism

4Infogr.am is a Web-based tool for creating infographics. Aimed at newsrooms, journalists and bloggers, it provides a variety of super-easy data visualization tools for online and offline publishing. Infogr.am is working on new interactive ways to present data in online news media. With data becoming more visual, Infogr.am’s a solution for interactive visualizations.

Long Play: Platform for long-form feature journalism

5Long Play is a new kind of digital publisher. LP publishes one well-developed piece of long-form narrative journalism per month. Its “singles,” made up of long-form features and investigative reporting, are longer than magazine articles but shorter than books. LP is also an experiment in finding a new business model for investigative journalism, which is suffering in the age of severe newsroom cuts. LP uses a crowdfunding mode: They sell their works directly to readers for the price of a cup of coffee. Says the Long Play team: “We believe that there are enough people who are willing to support the production of high-quality journalism with a few euros every month.” LP currently publishes in Finnish, and they plan to translate some of their stories into Swedish, English and other languages.

Sounds interesting, no?

News Pioneer Innovation Challenge

The event is organized by the Helsingin Sanomat Foundation, which runs the Uutisraivaaja Innovation Challenge in Finland.

Here are the details:

Where: d.school, Stanford’s Institute of Design

When: 6 to 7 pm Monday, with a reception at 5 pm, and a tour of the d.school afterward for judges and guests by Justin Ferrell, the Fellowships director at d.school; Justin was formerly director of digital development at the Washington Post.

If you’re interested in attending, please email Tanja Aitamurto by today.
JD Lasica is founder of Socialmedia.biz. We work with large and mid-size businesses and organizations on social media strategies and optimizing your online presence. Contact JD by email, follow him on Twitter and Google Plus or leave a comment below.

Google’s newest addition gives glimpse into future of technology

Guest post by Robert Scoble

If you aren’t familiar with Google Glass yet, just wait, you will be. A wearable computer with a head-mounted display, Google Glass is giving users access to information while they’re on the go. After using Google Glass for the past two weeks, I’m sharing my thoughts about the product. How much of a game changer is it? In the end, it will come down to the price.

Over the past wweek I gave five speeches while wearing Google Glass. I passed through airports six times and let hundreds of people try my Glass. I have barely taken it off since getting it other than to sleep.

Here are my impressions:

I will never live a day of my life from now on without Google Glass (or a competitor). It’s that significant.
• I will never live a day of my life from now on without it (or a competitor). It’s that significant.
• The success of this totally depends on price. Each audience I asked at the end of my presentations “who would buy this?” As the price got down to $200 literally every hand went up. At $500, a few hands went up. This was consistent, whether talking with students, or more mainstream, older audiences.
• Nearly everyone had an emotional outburst of “wow,” “amazing” “that’s crazy” or “stunning.”
• At NextWeb, 50 people surrounded me and wouldn’t let me leave until they had a chance at trying them. I haven’t seen that kind of product angst at a conference for a while. This happened to me all week long.
• Most of the privacy concerns I had before coming to Germany just didn’t show up. I was shocked by how few negative reactions I got (only one, where an audience member said he wouldn’t talk to me with them on). Funny, someone asked me to try them in a bathroom (I had them aimed up at that time and refused).
• I discovered a total generational gap. The older people said they would use them but were far more skeptical and less passionate. The 13- to 21-year-olds I met had different response.

Glass keeps users roped into Google’s services

Let’s cover the price. I bet that CEO Larry Page is considering two price points: something around $500, which would be very profitable. Or $200, which is about what the bill of materials costs. When you tear apart the glasses, like someone else did (I posted that to my Flipboard “Glasshole” magazine), you see a bunch of parts that aren’t expensive. This has been designed for mass production. In other words, millions of units. The only way Google will get there is to price them under $300.

I wouldn’t be shocked if Larry went very aggressive and priced them at $200.

Why would Google do this? Easy. I’m now extremely addicted to Google services. My photos and videos automatically upload to Google+. Adding other services will soon be possible (I just got a Twitter photo app that is being developed by a third party), but turning on automatic uploads to other services will kill my batteries on both my phone and my glasses (which doesn’t have much battery life anyway). So, I’m going to be resistant to adding Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Evernote, and Tumblr to my glasses. This is especially the case when Google+ works darn well and is the default.

Google: Moving away from an advertising-based business model?

Also, Google is forbidding advertising in apps. This is a huge shift for Google’s business model. I believe Larry Page is moving Google from an advertising-based company to a commerce-based company.

The first thing I tried that it failed on was, “Find me a sushi restaurant.” I’m sure that will get fixed soon and Google could conceivably collect a micropayment any time I complete a transaction like reserving a seat at a restaurant or telling a store like Bloomingdales “get me these jeans.”

There are literally billions of dollars to be made with this new commerce-based system, rather than force us to sit and look at ads, the way Facebook and tons of other services do.

Glass increases efficiency with unprecedented accuracy

When you wear these glasses for two weeks, you realize that having these on opens you up to a new commerce world. Why?

1. They are much more social than looking at a cell phone. Why? I don’t need to look away from you to use Google, or get directions, or do other things.
2. The voice works and works with nearly everyone and in every situation. It’s the first product that literally everyone could use with voice. It’s actually quite amazing, even though I know that the magic is that it expects to hear only a small number of things. “OK Glass, take a picture” works. “OK Glass, take a photo” doesn’t. The Glass is forcing your voice commands to be a certain set of commands and no others will be considered. This makes accuracy crazy high, even if you have an accent.

I continue to be amazed with the camera. It totally changes photography and video. Why? I can capture moments. I counted how many seconds it takes to get my smartphone out of my pocket, open it up, find the camera app, wait for it to load, and then take a photo. Six to 12 seconds. With Google Glass? Less than one second. Every time. And I can use it without having hands free, like if I’m carrying groceries in from the car and my kids are doing something cute.

I’ve been telling people that this reminds me of the Apple II, which I unboxed with my dad back in 1977. It was expensive. It didn’t do much. But I knew my life had changed in a big way and would just get better and better. Already this week I’ve gotten a new RSS app, the New York Times App, and a Twitter app with many more on the way.

This is certainly the most interesting new product since the iPhone, and I don’t say that lightly.

Yeah, I could say the camera isn’t good in low light. I could say it doesn’t have enough utility. It looks dorky. It freaks some people out (it’s new, that will go away once they are in the market).

But I don’t care. This has changed my life. I will never live a day without it on. It is that significant.

Now, Larry, if you can find a way to make it $200, you’ll have a major hit on your hands.