The Business Blog at Intuitive.com

The Philosophy of Social Media: Give, don't Take

Wed, 16 May 2012 17:20:29 -0700

I talk to a lot of people about how to work in the brave new world of social media. Unlike the world of Don Draper and his compatriots on Mad Men, where companies told us consumers what to think and how to talk about brands and products, we're in an era where that paradigm has been spun 180-degrees, stood on its head, and now the message comes from the consumer and is fed back up to the business, like it or not.

I've been in the business for over thirty years now, and remember companies like the late great Kodak being incredibly obsessive about their logo having just the right color of orange in print ads and other companies obsessing over typefaces and whether we acknowledged their trademarks each and every time we wrote about them.

Things have changed. Has your thinking?

To really get how to be successful in the world of social media, a world where your customer has a louder voice than you do, you have to really take something to heart, something that's inspired by John F. Kennedy, former president of the United States and a pretty shrewd operator all around. You've probably heard his quote. He said:

Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

In case you haven't heard it, here, enjoy his stirring inaugural address from Jan 20, 1961:

What's so important about this particular line in a speech? Because Kennedy totally nailed social media.

To be successful in social media, to be popular on Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, etc, you need to be constantly asking yourself the following:

What can I do for my customers?

Instead, too many people focus on the wrong questions, "how can I sell stuff?" or, more bluntly, "how can I get money out of your wallet?"

If you sell bicycles, for example, your blog, your Facebook fan page, should be full of handy tips that will help bicyclists save a few bucks on repairs, find out about cool new trails, learn about training tips, and even gain some smarts about teaching children how to ride. Are we selling anything here? Not yet.

The most essential part of being successful as an online business is building trust, and you can't do that without helping your customers be happy and successful. They're not stupid, however, they realize that you're a bike shop and you stay in business by selling bikes. But that doesn't mean that every communication they get from you, every update on your fan page needs to be about a new product or service. Blech.

An anecdote to illustrate: I noticed a leak under my kitchen sink one Sunday afternoon so I pulled out the yellow pages (yes, antiquated print) and looked up plumbers. I called up one place and was immediately told about the extra emergency weekend fee associated with someone coming out to see what was going on. Okay. Another spent the time telling me how busy they were and that perhaps we could schedule someone to show up Monday morning.

The third company I called, however, had a different approach. The answering service listened to my description and asked "can I have you check a few things real quick before we schedule anyone to come out to your place?" She then detailed a few simple diagnostics to try and one of them identified the problem -- a nut had come loose and needed to be tightened -- which I then fixed and solved the problem, no plumber needed. Her response: "great! glad I could help!"

My response? I circled their business in the yellow pages, with a vow to call them when I had need of a plumber in the future.

Do you see what they did? They trained their people to solve the customer's problem not sell their services. Smart. Very smart.

In the future, that's going to be the only way to stay in business. If you don't think so, just watch. The companies that are all about the hard sell, the ones with the miserable reputations, like car salesmen and insurance salesmen -- are going to die in the field, as more and more people savvy that there are smarter, less frustrating and insulting ways to do business. Hence powerhouse companies like Geico that advertise to get you to their Web site, not to get you to schedule someone to visit and hard sell you insurance.

If you're doing things right, old school folk will keep asking you "why are you giving it away?" and "what does that have to do with what we're selling?".

Those questions mean you're on the right track.

If you're truly dedicated to a healthy, engaged dialog with your marketplace -- including customers, potential customers and people who will never buy your product or service -- then you'll gain a strong reputation and will then be able to reap the benefit.

Trust me on this. And do it.

The New Reality for Journalists: Continuing Education

Thu, 10 May 2012 21:57:34 -0700

A guest post from Sherri Vasquez, host of Latin View on Colorado Public Television.

Gone are the days when news reporters were regarded as professional journalists, government watchdogs, and the guardians of public interest. In today's fast-changing world of new media technologies, news organizations want web developers, videographers, and social media marketers who can report.

A Denver television station recently posted a job opening for a multi-media producer, saying journalism degree "preferred" but web publishing and streaming required.

So if you suffered through college courses on journalism ethics and law to earn a degree, toss it on the shelf and enroll in some quick classes on web writing and publishing, shooting and editing video, and distributing news on a growing number of social media sites.

Newspapers, which often had guilds akin to unions, frowned on reporters performing tasks other than writing and editing. Like the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, many died a slow death over the years as the World Wide Web gained ground in distributing news and collecting ad revenue.

Some print journalists went on to earn advanced degrees in other fields like marketing communications, but again the web changed the way the profession operates, leaving old-school marketers with obsolete master's degrees struggling to learn technical skills today's teens take for granted.

Now it seems anyone with a cell phone can call oneself a news photographer and reporter. Webcams can even turn an average citizen into a news anchor.

But old newshounds take heart, because there is always a need for good reporting based on facts, research and solid writing. Almost anyone can write their thoughts and post it on the web, but not everyone can be an online journalist.

And since everyone seems to be marketing something on social media these days, take a few classes in web marketing and social media and start marketing your experience and expertise as a credible and respected news professional.

While adding web, video and social media skills may seem sufficient for the new world of news media, consider taking some classes on the Spanish language and diverse Hispanic cultures. Just this week ABC News announced it is partnering with Univision to launch a 24-hour cable news channel aimed at U.S. Hispanics.

Sherri Vasquez, host of Latin View on Colorado Public Television and PBS stations around the country, hold a bachelor's degree in journalism and master's degree in applied communication. More importantly, she is a perpetual student earning a certificate in web marketing and social media at Boulder Digital Arts.

Interview with a rare languages translator: David Leoney

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 08:08:01 -0700

Out of the blue, I received a query from David asking if it'd be okay if he translated my article on how to write spam assassin rules into Estonian. I said 'sure' and he did the translation -- spam assassin help in Estonian -- but I was curious about his experience as a freelance technical translator. Hence this interview...

Q: Tell us a bit about you, David. Where do you live? Where are you going to school and what languages do you speak?

I live in Italy and also here have my school at the university. I speak Italian, Spanish and Catalan.

Q: You focus on technical translations. Is that easier or harder than translating news stories, novels or other writing?

Actually, I do not focus on technical translation. I deal with all types of translations. I would like to say that there is no more difficult or easier translations. All of them are interesting for me.

Q: What do you like about translations?

Doing translations on different topics I always learn something new. I often have to check notions and facts in the online encyclopedia that broadens my mind.

Q: When you encounter a word or phrase that isn't in the target language, what's your typical solution? Do you just leave the word in its original form and quote it?

When I meet a notion with no equivalent in target language I try to explain it or give appropriate equivalent with reference and explanation.

Q: You're part of a project that focuses on translating material into rare European languages like Romanian, Catalan, Armenian, Ukranina and Belorussian. Why? What's the goal and what about it appeals to you?

Exactly this languages are difficult to find on the internet. Readers of the blog suffer from lack of information in native languages. That is why we are there to help.

Q: You say that translations are a "hobby" for you. What's your professional goal once you finish at University?

I study philology and when I graduate from the university i plan to do researches in the domain.

Thanks for the interesting info, David!

Kickstarter and Interactive eBooks, An Interview with Donny Claxton

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 16:49:42 -0700

I've known Donny since we met at a men's conference a few years ago in Atlanta, and when he shared with me that he was working on an interactive book around the history of Machu Picchu, I was so interested, I asked if I could interview him. This is the result.

Q: You're launching a new type of interactive book with your kickstarter project on Machu Picchu. What's your inspiration for this?

What excites me the most is an image of a darkened kid's room at night with a pup tent set up in the middle of the room. On the cover of the tent are patterns of pyramids, Stonehenge, menhirs, and TheWondersExpedition.com's logo of course, but inside the tent, instead of seeing the beams of a flashlight dancing about, you see the rectangular light of an iPad moving around. And as the camera peers in closer, you see a Dad's silhouette. He's finishing up and says, "And that's Machu Picchu, one of the new Seven Wonders of the World!" And next to him, a little head moves to look at him and his DAUGHTER says, "Daddy, that was great! When can we go back?" And dad replies, "How about tomorrow night? Sis."

It's the potential for that kind of interaction between dads and their kids that really excites me the most. Of course, dads are going to go re-read and dig deeper into the levels of the book than the kids, but it can become such a great tool for parent-child learning and nightly bed time stories.

Q: Why Machu Picchu, of all the places in the world to choose?

There's the business answer--The Google traffic about the site is incredible each month from all over the world. There's a demand to know more about this incredible site. And because it is so fragile and relatively remote, it's hard to get to and not something everyone can afford on a budget these days. This is a viable solution that meets such demands.

Then there's the more passionate answer--Machu Picchu now is regarded as one of the "new Seven Wonders of the World." 2012 marks the 100 year anniversary of its "re-discovery" by American Archeologist Hiram Bingham. And then it is really a fascinating place that helps all of us in our search for answers to what was life like for our ancient ancestors, what did they know, and how could they do things we'd have a hard time replicating today. There's just an innate curiosity people have about Machu Picchu and we are trying to help them find some answers.

Q: When you compare an interactive book, which is expensive to create, with a photo book a la "A Day In The Life", there's a clear trade-off between production cost. Why did you choose interactive?

We chose Interactive Books for the iPad because they clearly are the platform that offers the greatest experience to readers who want to feel like they're there. And for those who go, they'll even be able to take their iPad and point it at points at the site and use it as a tour guide instead of those old $9.99 headphones and a cassette recorder. Is it going to cost a little more than normal? Maybe, but there are only 2,500 people a day the Peruvian government will even let tour the site because of the impact foot traffic is having on it. We think it's worth it to put together this real-life, virtual experience for the benefit of 'children' of all ages who will be able to tour the site, again, even if they never get to go in person.

Q: While there are a number of different computing platforms for an interactive book, the iPad tablet is a clear market leader. Are you just focusing on producing an interactive title for the iPad, or will you support Android, Windows 8 tablet, etc?

With 52 million iPads sold, it's clearly a business decision at this point to focus on where the greatest market is. However, we know that there are other developments coming a long and we are waiting for Android and Microsoft to come forward with software alternatives that also will allow us to bring this experience to their platforms. But for now, we're focusing on developing the best product possible and the most bells and whistles possible for the Interactive Book for the iPad..

Q: What's next for Wonder Expeditions after Machu Picchu?

Already in product is Dr. Mark Van Stones' 2012: Science and Prophecy of the Ancient Maya, a book already in print and in an e-pub format, but we know, already half-way through its conversion into an Interactive Book, once its out readers will look at the three alternative formats and clearly see there's only one they want to read. We are hoping to have Dr. Van Stone's book out in mid-Summer as interest in whether or not we're all going to die on Dec. 21, 2012 escalates. Next month in Memphis at the Society of American Archeologists, we're getting the forward shot with one of Dr. Van Stone's mentors and one of the original professors who started the whole 2012 meme to begin with. Not to mention some other great scholars.

But after Machu Picchu we are planning to do books right out of the shoot on Stonehenge, The Colosseum in Rome, The Great Wall of China, and the Pyramids of Giza. Two weeks ago we sent our first crew to Chaco Canyon New Mexico to begin work on an Interactive Book on the Anasazi Indians. It's just fascinating where all this project will take us.

And on our Website, TheWondersExpedition.com we're already loading up cool content about some of these places around the world. Coming soon will be a Webinar series where anyone can sign up and talk to some of the world's prime scholars on these sites and topics and learn what you cannot learn from watching a crazy show like Ancient Aliens.

Q: Switching gears, you're seeking funding through Kickstarter. Tell us briefly what Kickstarter is, how it works, and why you choose that avenue to fund the project?

Kickstarter is a crowd-source fundraising site. You develop a fund-raising goal, add descriptions of what your project is about, do a video to support your effort and then spend the next 30-60 grueling days expanding your social circles and networks and asking, encouraging and convincing people that you have a great project that will come to be, only, and only if, you reach your funding goal. Nearly 50 percent of all projects get funded. The trick is to be in the group who does....

When people back the campaign, they also get a commitment for some cool stuff from the project's organizers. For instance, for $25 a person is going to get their name at the back of our book, but also get to interact with us as we do the project and actually get a vote on one of the three final cover options for the book so they have some buy in and satisfaction for hopefully having made a difference. They'll also get a copy of the book. Good stuff.

Hop over to Kickstarter to help Donny with this cool project!

Q: What's your experience with Kickstarted at this point just a few days into your project being publicly available?

We started yesterday, a Thursday and wanted to make sure we were in the game before payday of March 2012. Things were slow yesterday but we've had a good morning on a Friday and are excited about having things ready to tickle people's interest when they return to work Monday. This is a lot of work and it's not easy. Asking people to fund a project, particularly a new type of project and one that's going to largely happen in a foreign country on another continent is a little daunting. But it has to be done if we're going to be successful. Every person we can reach directly or through the networks of others, is a potential backer who will put us that much closer to our goal. The short answer is I'm scared to death!

Q: I have to ask this, where does the target funds of $57,766 come from? What are we paying for?

As in all things, nothing ever is free. Five percent of what we raise is going to Kickstarter.com, that's their bid. Another 5 percent goes to Amazon for a transactional fee. The rest of the funding goes to help cover the costs of sending a four or five-person crew to Peru for a week and dodge the rains, other tourists, the bugs and did I mention SNAKES?! (We hear it's the 12-inch gray ones that are the worst!) Like I said before, going to Machu Picchu isn't inexpensive and it's part of the reason most people never will get to go there in the first place.

There also will be production costs, like you have to get permits from the Peruvian government to use "professional lenses" to shoot. And then there are costs for ISBN listings, equipment rentals, shipping and even to pay for some of the cool swag we will send out as rewards for backing the program. That all gets factored in with the cost of the project.

It's not an easy thing to make all this come together. And rather than going to a Venture Capitalist who is going to want to take a chunk of the company, this helps us prove our worthiness so that hopefully other funding possibilities will come about.

Chance #2 for you to hop over to Kickstarter to help Donny with this cool project...

Q: Finally, tell us a bit about yourself, Donny, and what's brought you to this unusual project.

I've been in public relations for about 25 years and worked for two Alabama governors, served as the communications director for Dallas schools, and done corporate PR for ExxonMobil, but nothing in that time has excited me like the opportunities The Wonders Expedition presents. Before leaving corporate PR, I had gotten really big into social media and blogging. Traditional PR firms don't understand the power and impact they have. Or didn't then.

The Wonders Expedition began back in July when I literally asked myself, "What the Hell is Stonehenge doing up there all by itself?" I then began to pull the GPS coordinates of more than 250 sites around the globe and started to see some remarkable patterns. Nonetheless, a study of these sites brought a realization that most people never will be able to visit them in person and there is so much mystery and curiosity about them. So we found a way to give people a real-life experience of these places, even if they can't go there in person. With these Interactive Books for the iPad, and soon, other mobile devices, it's going to provide an incredible experience. By the way, I sound found out that Stonehenge isn't in any way "all by itself." There are hundreds of sites all over Great Britain like it in many, many ways.

It is the potential to help bring parts of the world to those who might otherwise miss it that excites me and gets me up every morning. I'm working on this project from about 6 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. daily. My three daughters went to Poverty Point, in Louisiana for December Solstice. We had the most incredible time learning and finding out things like the Native American Indians were building mounds in Louisiana BEFORE the Egyptians were building the pyramids two degrees to the south and 7,000 miles to the east. The mystery just keeps my fires burning.

How to moderate a great panel discussion

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:32:05 -0700

I'm going to be moderating a panel discussion at the Dad 2.0 Summit entitled Show 'Em You Mean Business and as part of preparing for the panel, I've been thinking about what makes a really great panel discussion at a conference and what, by contrast, produces one that's a boring snoozefest where people are all quickly distracted by their smartphones and the free coffee in the lobby.

The result are my recommendations based on moderating and participating in dozens and dozens of panels at a wide variety of business and technical conferences.

Disagree with each other!

This first recommendation I have for panelists might sound odd, but if you've ever attended a roundtable-style discussion you'll know what I mean. Look at it this way: is there anything more boring than "I agree with Sue." or "I have nothing to add"?

Obviously, it's not a reality show, we don't need to artificially add drama and conflict, but if one of the other panelists says something that's not consistent with your own view or perspective, call them out on it and have an animated discussion -- or even an argument -- about the topic. It'll instantly wake people up and enliven the discussion.

When you're not speaking, remain interested and alert.

Look at the photo above. Do the other panelists look like they're interested in what the speaker is sharing with the audience? Yeah, not so much. And if the panelists are bored and zoning out, how can you expect the audience to remain alert and attentive?

I realize this can be a challenge if everyone on the panel agrees with each other. I mean, when one panelist is just droning on for five minutes about how wonderful their product is it's astonishingly difficult not to drift, drift, drift away. But think about the audience. Aren't they in the same boat? So interrupt!

Or, better, prep the moderator to be comfortable interrupting, challenging points, or even teasing the panelists about sales pitches (a total no-no) or other information that's uninteresting.

Which reminds me of the next point...

Never pitch from the stage.

I don't care if you're the moderator or a panelist, it's incredibly rare for someone to attend a panel discussion at a conference and want to hear a sales pitch. Maybe one out of a hundred. Maybe less. Whatever the case, I always warn panelists that they darn well better not pitch their company or service and if I do find that they're selling from the stage, I will interrupt them and move the topic along. It's really one of the worst sins a panel can commit and in my opinion that's one of the greatest challenges of the moderator, to keep things fresh, lively and non-commercial.

And speaking of the moderator, I'll also say that I think they should play a pivotal role in the success of a panel and I definitely see myself as the director of the panel, with no compunction about interrupting, changing the direction of the conversation, bringing up new topics and even adding my own opinion or insight on a topic. Moderators shouldn't be timekeepers, they should be an integral part of the conversation, chosen because they're also subject-matter experts.

Have fun on stage.

This is the panel version of my public speaking mantra that an audience takes away the energy that the person or people on stage has while speaking. If you're all boring, if you're all reserved, if you're too serious, then the panel will be a drag and people will remember it as heavy and self-important. Have some fun, share a joke, or gently tease each other and each time the audience laughs you've opened them up just a bit more to actually getting the message and gaining some value from their attendance. And isn't that the goal?

Look at the photo above. Don't you want to know what just transpired to cause them to laugh so openly and enthusiastically?

Be prepared.

None of the above should negate that the best panels are those where the panelists have met beforehand, have discussed the topic and how they want to approach it, and understand each other's position and expertise. Ideally, panelists should also have sent pithy questions to the moderator beforehand, so that if there's a lull in the conversation new topics can be introduced in a smart and thoughtful way.

I enjoy both being on panels and moderating panels, and have experienced quite a variety of discussion panels and roundtable chats from the audience perspective too. It's not hard to make them great conversations of experts with input and commentary from the audience, but it's not magic. Some preparation, some understanding of each other's perspective, and a little sense of humor can go a long way to ensuring that your panel stands out as a highlight of the conference or workshop.

Chevy, Ford, 2012 and Blunt Superbowl Adverts

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 22:17:07 -0700

Just watched Superbowl XLVI and really enjoyed the game. Tense, surprisingly close, and a match that could have switched on that final "Hail Mary" pass. How can you not enjoy that?

In addition I also watch the Superbowl to enjoy the advertisements and really liked the Walking Dead-esque post-apocalyptic ad from Chevrolet that suggested only people with their heavy-duty Silverado trucks would survive the apocalypse, not people with Ford trucks.

Haven't seen the ad, officially known as the Chevy 2012 Apocalypse Video? Here's an embed:

What makes this Chevy Silverado 2012 Apocalypse Video so interesting is the back story: It appears that somehow Ford saw the advertisement and sent Chevy a Cease & Desist letter, insisting that the company not air the spot. They obviously did.

In fact, the Yahoo Autos blog Motoramic reported that: "Chevrolet says Ford sent a cease and desist letter, demanding the spot showing Silverado owners munching Twinkies and mourning the non-survival of their Ford-owning buddy. A source familiar with the dispute says Ford also called on NBC to pull the $7 million, one-minute air time."

Of course, General Motors executives say that they simply have the best, most dependable trucks. Chief Marketing Officer Joel Ewanick has a funny quip, actually: "We can wait until the world ends, and if we need to, we will apologize," Ewanick said in a statement. "In the meantime, people who are really worried about the Mayan calendar coming true should buy a Silverado right away."

Generally I prefer advertisements that promote and highlight the features of their own product rather than slamming their competitors -- a sentiment that's even more true with political ads! -- but in this case I'll cut Chevy some slack. It's a funny spot and quite effective. Ford clearly needs to one-up the company if it feels shortchanged, not bring lawyers into the mix.

HP markets to stereotypes? Ugh.

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 09:25:38 -0700

I realize that as a dad blogger -- see GoFatherhood for my dad blog -- I get on a lot of mailing lists that are really more aimed at mom or mommy bloggers because, well, most of us Dads don't blog about parenting, we blog about work, tech or our other passions. Mars, Venus, all that. So I'm no stranger to getting press releases and media queries that begin "Dear Mom" or "As a Mom..."

Still, as a former employee of Hewlett-Packard, I cringed when I received this promotion from the team at Porter Novelli PR for the HP SmartPrint system:

As a busy mom, I'm sure you don't have time to struggle with difficult or unreliable web printing. You need to print that recipe ASAP for your kid's last minute school bake sale! Well, you are in luck.

Recipe? Do "busy moms" only print things related to their children's activities? Are we in the 50s? Oh, and I'm pretty sure I'm not a busy mom, now that I think about it.

As such, I wanted to let you know about something you might be interested in. I work with Hewlett-Packard (partners with Microsoft) on the Bing Bar for HP Toolbar. The Bing Bar for HP is a free tool designed to...

Okay, a wordy and confusing explanation of what they're talking about, but not a bad little utility that can remove all the adverts and superfluous content on the page prior to printing, but what galls me the most is this following paragraph:

What does this mean - when you print recipes, you get the recipe - not 3 pages of pictures, random site text and ads. Want to print a news story? You get the news story on the full page, not on a skinny third of a page with the rest taken by unneeded clutter. The use cases for the Smart Print function can go on and on.

Notice the glitch in this release too: It's written for "busy moms" who presumably have nothing better to do than "print a recipe" for the school bake sale, but it still has such insider industry jargon as "use cases". If you're a busy mom, would you know what that means? Or just toss it?

Here's the worst part of this PR query misfire: the same message could have easily been better crafted, not offended the vast majority of women who have a professional side as well as a busy mom side, who have enough smarts to figure things out, and could have avoided opaque jargon.

For example, "You're not the only one who hates printing, whether it's a recipe for the school bake sale, notes from a book club meeting or travel documents, just to find over half the printout is ads and other irrelevant content! That's why we at the HP SmartPrint team created..."

What do you think? Example of a poorly written and targeted PR effort, or am I just too touchy this morning?

Tip: There's an Art to Formatting a Press Release

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 09:14:36 -0700

As we close in on the huge Consumer Electronics Show (still almost a month away) I am now getting 10-20 emails a day from PR agencies and publicists, inviting me to attend various events, come to parties, meet with executives, and schedule time to stop by one or another of the over 2000 vendors that are going to be at the show. Helpful, but overwhelming.

What it also highlights, however, is the difference between a PR agency that understands the reality of a busy journalist and those that exist rather for their own self-aggrandizement perhaps as much as for promoting their client.

Case in point, the press release from Sword Girls about their new beta release, from Michael Meyers Public Relations. My "press release" folder on Gmail has over 2100 releases tucked away for later reference, and coupled with the tsunami of CES releases, well, there's really no justification for this:

It's small but you can easily see that when I received this release, I had to actually scroll down in Gmail to get to the release itself, there was so much information about the PR agency included on the top. I appreciate your zeal, Michael, but surely the Facebook button to "like" the release is less important than actually showing me the release itself?

I might be nit-picking here, but if you're in the media, you know what I mean: here's a situation where a company has spent some coin hiring and working with a PR agency and they probably have no idea that the agency's approach and release formatting is getting in the way of their success. Did I actually read the release? No. No pictures, having to scroll downward, it takes a few more neurons that I am willing to allocate to an unknown company. Is that harsh? Probably. But when I'm filtering through 25 or more releases received each day (that'll jump up to a few hundred / day in January during CES) that's my reality.

Do you receive press releases? Do you ever look at how they're formatting and laid out? What are your best recommendations for making them interesting, engaging and effective?

What's the future of laptop PCs versus tablets?

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 09:17:34 -0700

I received the following question from a reader and it started me thinking....

With the recent popularity of tablets, do you think in the near future tablets will replace netbooks or stay as a substitute? If you think tablets and netbooks are going to continue competing against one another, do you think the demand for netbooks will decline but not perish? Thanks!

He raises an interesting question, but I'm going to expand it just a bit to ask an even bigger question: Are tablet computers going to eclipse and ultimately replace laptop computers in the marketplace?

I have the most popular devices -- two laptops (one Mac, one PC) and two tablets (an iPad 2 and an Android-powered Kindle Fire) -- so I can start by discussing my own experience. With both a Mac and PC, I definitely spend more time on the Macintosh side. Less viruses and a more aesthetically pleasing user experience works for me.

On the tablet side, it's a bit more complicated because I'm more of an information producer than consumer, and I believe that in their current instantiation, tablets are optimal for consuming data, not creating it. As a result, I find that I use my iPad for reading ebooks (though I just got the new Umberto Eco novel, so I'll be switching to paper for a while to enjoy the full kinesthetic experience) and for entertainment, especially on airplane flights.

The Kindle Fire is still so new that I'm trying to figure out what it offers over and above a great form factor with its crystal-clear 7-inch screen and low price tag. Kindles are still optimal for digital books and magazines, and I'm working out how to get my own movies, music, and reference PDFs onto the device.

When I watch people coming out of the Apple Store, there are at least as many MacBook Air buyers as iPad buyers, another data point.

Television and radio are all about consumption. The Internet and our always-on world is just as much about publishing and production, however, and that plays a major part in this discussion.

Facebook reports over 250 million photos are uploaded each day. Tapping in a sentence or two is no problem, but anything longer and you're moving into the gray area of adding a wireless keyboard to your tablet or mobile device. Isn't it then essentially a laptop?

I believe that we're heading towards a hybrid world where the average user will have a tablet computer, either running iOS or Android, that will neatly slip into a case that includes more storage, additional ports and a keyboard. We'll have a second 'travel' case that's slim and offers additional battery power. Between the two we'll have a tablet that's also a laptop, the best of both worlds.

Data security and the CLEAR airport security card

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 15:41:45 -0700

As regular readers know, I wrote a blog post a week or so ago about applying for a CLEAR card [see Biometrics and my application for the CLEAR card] and in that writeup I had one big question: with all the biometric data collected, how does the company ensure that it's safe and secure?

I just got an update from CLEAR Vice President Mark Neirick addressing my security concerns. Here's what he says:

CLEAR recognizes that with the information provided by its members comes the expectation and trust that CLEAR will appropriately protect it. A key difference between the current system and that of the previous Verified Identity Pass system is that personal data is not distributed to remote systems such as kiosks or mobile systems.

CLEAR encrypts all data in transmission to ensure security in transit. CLEAR uses a variety of security protocols and procedures to secure the data collected including: AES 256, virtual private networks, SFTP, SSL, and TLS. In many cases these protocols and procedures are combined for even higher levels of protection.

Our secure data center uses extensive physical and logical security protections including access control, personnel screening, video surveillance, intrusion detection, and others. The data stored on the CLEARcard is encrypted with 2 separate security keys. The fingerprints and iris images collected are converted to templates prior to being stored on the CLEARcard. These templates can be used for positive matching against the original biometric but cannot be used to reverse engineer the source biometric.

Other than our technical security standards, tools, and procedures, the CLEAR privacy and security policies help ensure the integrity of the information we collect and protect. These policies include screening requirements for key employees and contractors, data management policies, and mandatory training all focused on ensuring the highest levels of protection for our member's data.

Is it sufficient? I will say that it's something that the company needs to address head on. Responses to my previous article about CLEAR demonstrate clearly that people are leery of trading their personal data - particularly biometric data -- against the convenience of passing through airport security more rapidly.

What do you think? Is this response from Mark sufficient to alleviate your anxieties in this regard?

Biometrics and my application for the CLEAR card

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 11:28:15 -0700

It's not often a company goes bankrupt and comes back from the dead as a better, smarter firm. Seems like companies are more often built on the rubble of previous ventures instead. The airport express security program CLEAR is a notable counterexample, with its database of Transportation Security Administration-approved biometrics that let them whisk you through the airport security lines. With over 200,000 paying members, the first generation of CLEAR just up and declared bankruptcy one day and shut down, leaving a lot of frustrated, disappointed users: no-one got a dime back.

Fast forward a few years and the company has been relaunched under a new management team and the first thing that they did was to extend every previous CLEAR subscriber membership in the new program for the time they had left originally. Without charge. Nice. Smart way to build instant customer loyalty.

When they approached me a few weeks ago and offered a one-year membership in the CLEAR program, I read about the program and decided to sign up. I don't fly that often by myself -- if you travel with others and they don't have CLEAR, well, they'll end up in the slow lane while you zip through. Not a way to keep friends and definitely not an option with children involved -- but still, I love the idea so I signed up!

Taking advantage of my trip out to Los Angeles to speak at Blogworld Expo, I went through the CLEAR biometric collection step at the airport, with my friend and photographer Aimee Giese in tow...

Data. Lots of Data

I knew in advance that I had to bring my passport, current drivers license, and be ready to have my fingerprints and eyes scanned. They collect all the data digitally, so the CLEAR enrollment kiosk is really a wonder of compact tech, with an iris scanner, camera, fingerprint scanner and document scanner, along with a mag card reader, keyboard and big display screen. Quite the gizmo!

That took me a bit by surprise too. I thought that my passport would be used to verify my ID, not actually scanned and parsed. To give you a sense of how sophisticated their system is, the first time we went through the application process, I signed up as "Dave" Taylor and when my passport was scanned, it failed to verify because it lists me as "David" Taylor. Right. We backed up, revised it to "David" and it worked properly. Cool.

Then it was time for my fingerprints to be collected...

I had to then enter my social security number, which they used to immediately pull my credit report and quiz me on background data only I'd know, like previous street addresses. Creepy to suddenly have my street address from twelve years ago pop up on their screen, but I've seen this sort of credit history quiz verification system before and passed the test, fortunately. If you have a bad memory, you could have a problem with this, I suppose.

The Great Iris Scan

The last step of the process was to scan my irises (iri?) and that was surprisingly easy: a glass panel at (adult) eye level on the kiosk, about 8" wide had the eye imaging device and all I had to do was slowly move forward and backward until a small green dot appeared in my face's reflection on the glass. Moments later we were looking at my irises:

Apparently, there are more personally identifying points on your iris than there are on your fingers, so an iris scan is actually a better way to establish identity. After seeing the film Minority Report, however, I worry about unexpected workarounds. :-)

That was it. Data collected. I'll get my CLEAR card in the mail, with all my biometrics encrypted in the chip buried within the card.

How is it encoded? "It's all ones and zeroes" the gal working at the kiosk explained. Uh, yeah, so's everything else. Still, as I pointed out to them, CLEAR now has an extraordinary wealth of data on me, more than just about anyone else, including the US Government, between my birthday, SSN, fingerprints, iris scans, and travel history. That's slightly alarming from a Big Brother perspective, but understanding how they secure and keep this data safe is a separate discussion, one that I'll have with their security team, and report back.

Meanwhile, I can't wait to get my card and try it, preferably on a day when the airport's crazy busy.

Curious about CLEAR? If you sign up using my referrer code, you'll get an additional month of membership free. Why not give it a shot, particularly if you're a frequent traveller? Here's the link: Sign up for CLEAR today.

Note: at this moment in time, CLEAR is only available at the Denver International and Orlando airports. There are a lot more airports that they're in negotiations with, and the buzz online is that next up are (hopefully) Washington DC, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Don't quote me on that, though.

Top Tips for Coping With Fear of Public Speaking

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 16:14:33 -0700

A friend of mine who is scheduled to give the opening talk at a major conference later this week posted on Facebook that she's both excited and nervous about her talk. Nothing unusual, of course, and her anxiety is certainly understandable: fear of public speaking is the #1 anxiety in the general population.

In that regard, I've been lucky in that I've been speaking from podiums and stages for decades now and when I first realized how much I enjoyed the limelight, I studied top professional public speakers to learn what made them tick, what made them engaging, fun and interesting. The two main people I watched, over and over again, in case you're curious, were Tom Peters and Tony Robbins. Both are just dynamite on stage. But why? That's what I figured out...

Entertain, then Teach

The first thing I realized is that as someone on stage, I need to be interesting. No, more than interesting, I need to be an entertainer, a performer. I mean, I'm on stage, I'm performing. Not in the monkey and organ grinder sense (hopefully!) but still, the best speakers are people who keep your attention and find that marvelous mix of fun, entertaining and informative.

There are some speakers who have the opposite problem too, of course. They're all entertainment, often the "bad boy" persona on stage, but afterwards you realize that they didn't actually have anything of value to share. Not uncommon for keynote and paid speakers, unfortunately, so it's really a mix that you need to try and attain. But to assume that you're speaking at a professional conference or event and therefore you don't need to do anything other than share your research data or case studies in a dry monotone. Well. It already sounds boring, doesn't it?

Tom Peters Entertaining His Audience

I once spoke at the Modern Language Association Convention and was the odd man out. I didn't stand in front of the room and read a prepared paper, word for word, without looking up or even taking a breath. I actually engaged my audience and made eye contact, shared humorous asides, and had a bit of fun with my session. They didn't know what to to make of it. Me? I never went back. Yikes.

Prepare. And Relax

Two of the best things you can do to get ready for a speech or other presentation are to spend the time preparing your material. It's a very, very rare person who can give an extemporaneous talk and not fall flat. Those people you see doing it on TV and at major events? Yeah, they have speeches they've studied, often for weeks, prior to stepping onto the stage.

In that same vein, don't over-prepare. Practice your talk for a few colleagues or in front of a mirror? Could be a good idea, especially if you're not good at pacing yourself. But doing that a dozen times or more? You'll just get paranoid and more anxious, not less. Ditto slides. Revise them once or twice, but if you're spending hours and hours on your deck, you're putting your attention into the wrong thing.

Once you've gotten to a good spot, take a deep breath. Go for a walk. Exercise. Have sex. Whatever. Just breath out and relax. You're going to do fine.

No, Really, Everyone Loves You.

Everyone Loves You

I don't speak at political rallies, so this next part might be skewed, but in my experience, it's always true that every single person in the audience wants you to be awesome. They don't want to nit-pick, they don't want to be critical, they want to find your talk fascinating, thought-provoking and entertaining.

That's reassuring, isn't it?

I think the fear of public speaking is closely tied to a fear of looking stupid or being embarrassed, but if you envision that everyone wants you to succeed, not fail, then you realize that you're going to be speaking to a supportive audience that will forgive just about anything -- including speech impediments, coughing fits, stumbling when you're walking on stage, accidentally smacking the microphone, or even -- in one notable experience I witnessed -- walking on stage with a glass of wine and then promptly spilling it all over yourself. Really, as long as you keep calm and have a sense of humor, it's just about impossible to alienate an audience if you actually have something worth saying.

You're Already Entertaining and Informative

You wouldn't be invited to speak at a conference or trade show if you weren't already considered someone smart, savvy and blessed with good communication skills. Really. Walking on stage doesn't take that away from you, and I know, I've run all-day workshops for 500+ people.

Here's an exercise that'll convince you that you're ready: think about the last time you were hanging out with your buddies, your mates, your colleagues and everyone was paying attention to you, smiling and nodding as you talked. Got that? Now capture that relaxed sensation and stick it in your pocket. Then pull it out just before you walk on stage.

Big Stage, Little Person

One more thought about how to do well speaking on stage: be bigger than life. Whether it's a small room with thirty people or a large stage and seating for a thousand, you need to be bigger, bolder and more enthused than you'd be if we were sitting across from each other at the local Starbucks and chatting.

Tony Robbins and his Exaggerated Stage Presence

Imagine you're in the back of the room. Hold up your fingers and measure. The speaker's no bigger than your thumb or smartphone screen. Yeah, it's called perspective, I know. But it's important, because if you want to really hold your audience and have them listen to every word you utter, you need to capture and keep their attention.

It's like when movies first started, because there was no sound and the projection systems were crummy, actors had very exaggerated movements and gestures. Turns out that works really well on stage. Even with sound.

Relax and Have Fun

Most of all, my key advice to any public speaker is always the same: relax, relax, relax and have fun on stage. Really. It's fun to be on stage.

You'll do GREAT!

Join me for a Facebook & Social Media Marketing workshop

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 08:49:08 -0700

I'm excited to let you know about a really cool workshop that my friend Andrea Vahl and I are doing in a few weeks focused almost exclusively on Facebook marketing. You might recognize Andrea's name, she's not only one of the co-authors of the just release Facebook Marketing for Dummies, but she's also known for her shrill alter-ego Grandma Mary and her entertaining video interviews.

Here's just a subset of what you'll learn in our workshop:

How to get found in local searches so that you can get new clients
How to get more Likes to your Facebook Page and convert those new connections into customers
The best times to post, how often to post and what to post
How to sell from your Facebook Page without feeling pushy
Where to get keyword ideas that you can incorporate into all your social media profiles
How to optimize your profiles to help your SEO so that you are found
How to use Twitter if you don't want to Tweet
Where to find targeted new followers
The best Twitter tools to make your job easier and take less time
Three things you must do on LinkedIn to increase your exposure and help you come up in searches
How to find and connect with new people
Google Plus and why you need to get started while it's still in beta
Four videos you should create on YouTube to help you connect with clients
How to build a blog that acts as the centerpiece of your social media presence
The three most important things you can do today to improve your search engine rank

The event will be a one-day workshop -- including lunch -- located conveniently in Louisville, Colorado, with easy access from Denver and Boulder, as well as points north and south.

When? October 18th, 2011.

Piqued your interest? We also have early bird registration if you act quickly. Details, sign up, maps, and much more can be found here: Facebook and Social Media Marketing workshop.

Hope you can join us, I know I'm excited to spend a day working with Andrea and learning from her!

Smart: Visa's new Online Shopping Card

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 09:01:51 -0700

There I was queued up to buy stuff at the local King Sooper supermarket when I realized that the card I was looking at in a plastic box wasn't a gift card but something rather more interesting:

Visa Corporation is finally figuring out that our collective anxiety about shopping online, identity theft, theft of credit and card balance, etc, can be tapped from a business perspective and has introduced their Visa Online Shopping Card.

Smarter yet, it's a debit card which means that even if someone does steal the card number and CVV number the maximum charge they can run up is only as much as you actually have in that account's balance.

I'm actually a big fan of debit cards anyway, because having credit cards that are limited to money on hand means you can't get into debt. In my opinion there are too many people that live with so much debt that they end up working and earning money to service their debt (e.g., pay interest and fees) rather than saving or actually buying the stuff they want. In my wallet is one credit card and one debit card, the latter of which I use far more often. That, however, is probably a different topic.

Back to the Online Shopping Card!

What's interesting to me is that your credit card, Visa or MasterCard, already has guarantees against online fraud. In Visa's Zero Liability promise, for example, the company assures you:

Shop worry-free at millions of merchants: You can use your card to shop with confidence. That's because Visa protects your card information 24/7 and you won't be held liable for unauthorized purchases made with your card or account information.

Nonetheless the fact that we consumers are worried about online fraud and liability -- and we clearly are -- is reason enough to justify the release of the Visa Online Shopping Debit Card. It's smart and if you're worried, why not pick one up? For a one-time fee of $4.95, it's a smart way to manage things, and 10x if you have a parent or child who is profligate in their online spending.

And if you're a marketing person like me, marvel at how Visa can simultaneously have a Zero Liability promise to its customers and still figure out a way to generate additional corporate revenue based on the very same customer fear. That's just good marketing.

Social media really does matter to SEO

Fri, 26 Aug 2011 23:47:38 -0700

I'm fascinated to find that a Web site that my friend Christian Toto (film critic at What Would Toto Watch) and I (under the aegis of my Dave On Film blog) are building out and experimenting with has pulled directly into the #1 slot on Google for our catch phrase, yet it has no incoming links other than a post on Facebook and another on Google Plus.

Here's the Google search result for the phrase "dinner with a critic":

I realize that it's a perfect match for our domain name (which is, ingeniously enough, DinnerWithaCritic.com) but that wouldn't explain moving into the #1 position on a search that has 13.1 million results. Is it because I'm logged in to Google? No, I had a number of other people do the same search and report the same #1 match.

Think about it: there are no incoming links for this site, I've never submitted it with Google, and a week ago it was available for registration. I post a note on Facebook with the clickable URL and another on Google Plus similar, and less than 48 hours later it's top 'o the charts on the search for dinner with a critic.

Now tell me again why you think that social media isn't relevant to search results placement?