Marketing with Michael

Reddit, A New Marketing Frontier?

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 18:08:00 -0400

For those of you who haven’t heard of Reddit, it is a website that people post things from the internet to that they find interesting or feel strongly about. You will find anything from pictures of adorable baby animals to political discussions. One of the things Reddit has is a subreddit (section of the website) called AMA, which stands for “Ask Me Anything”. People who are either relatively famous or have experienced something others would find interesting create a thread for other members of the site to ask them questions.

One night while I was browsing Reddit, I noticed that Bear Grylls, host of Man vs. Wild, had done an AMA. After closer inspection, I noticed that unlike other AMA’s I had seen, this one was heavily branded. He did video responses and linked to them, the videos being found on a branded YouTube Channel made by Degree Men. Now, they have done even more with it, and the video responses are laid out on the Degree Men’s “The Adrenalist” website. The cool part about the whole thing is that people did not feel like they were being marketed to at all, it was just a really interesting AMA. But they were totally being marketed to.

Since Reddit gets around 13 million absolute visitors per month and is the third largest referral site in the United States, why haven’t marketers been flocking to it? Short answer answer is, they probably don’t “get” it well enough to confidently dive into it. Here are three likely reasons why:

1. Its a different format than marketers are used to. Instead of setting up an account and just having conversations like with Facebook and Twitter, you have to have more of a direct point to the conversation on Reddit because it is a forum type setup. So far, AMA has been the subreddit of choice for anyone looking to tap into some upvotes. This makes sense, because it is the closest thing to a Facebook or Twitter, which many marketers use and can be highly effective.

2. It has inside jokes about ALL THE THINGS! Reddit is full of inside jokes that you can only really understand if you spend enough time on the site to get them. There are a myriad of internet memes, sayings, and references to posts gone by that it can be a little overwhelming to actually talk to a mob of redditors.

3. Redditors are extremely inquisitive. Just like in social media management, you have to be ready to answer some tough questions about your product, service, or company. From what I have noticed though, unless you are a person or company that has already won Reddit’s heart, there is a big chance you will have to work extremely hard to feel any love; even more so than on Twitter or Facebook.

So, what can you as a marketer do to overcome these challenges and get some upvotes in the minds of Reddit? You need to “get” it. How do you “get” it? Just like with anything, you have to get some experience on it. Make a point to get on it and read some things. Who knows, you might even like it. Once you “get” it, you need to make sure you are making a fun and interesting experience, not an advertisement posted from an account you set up. No one wants to see that kind of desperate marketing slime. As long as it is done right, I look forward to seeing more marketers trailblazing the Reddit frontier.

To Like or Recommend, That Is the Question

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 23:38:00 -0400

What is the difference between the Facebook “Like” button and the “Recommend” button? Nothing, when it comes to functionality, but the message it send to the reader’s social network could be vastly changed. The Facebook “recommend” button was created after the “Like” button, the reason being that there are things in life that you wouldn’t want to say you like, but still want to share. For example:

8,997 people like that Steve Jobs died?! Those monsters!

While those thousands of people don’t actually like that Steve Jobs has passed away, it still looks awkward, to say the least, which might prevent some people from using the button. This is exactly why there is a “recommend” button. You (hopefully) wouldn’t want to say that you liked something awful, such as a natural disaster, rape, or the death of one of America’s great innovators; but you still might want to share the news with your friends though, and express how badly you feel about it. So, content creators, choose your Facebook share buttons wisely. It could greatly change the message your readers send to their social network when they pass along your work.

How To See Which Social Network Drives More Traffic To Your Links

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 16:50:00 -0400

If you use multiple social networks, there’s a chance you are like me and sometimes post similar things on all of them. For example, when I write a new post for Marketing with Michael, I post the link on my Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ account so people I’m connected with in all of my networks can see them. When doing social media marketing, it is very important to know which of your social networks’ fans and followers are engaged and which aren’t, so you know that what your doing is fine, or if you should be trying something different. Or, you may not be a marketer at all, and you are just curious if people actually check out the links you post. Either way, here is an easy way to figure out how many clicks your links get, and which social networks get the most.

Step 1: Go to www.bitly.com

Yes, the URL shortener. Make sure you log in.

Step 2: Edit your link with a tag

At this point, you will be adding a tag to your link that you want to share, so you can tell which social networks get the most clicks. You are essentially giving each social network its on unique link to the same webpage. For any link, just add an “=tag” at the end. What you call the tag is arbitrary, but just make sure you will recognize it. This is used to allow you to see which social networks are getting you the most clicks. As you can see in the picture above, I added “=facebook” for a link I will be posting on my Facebook. This will not change the page you are linking people to, but they will see the tag, so don’t make it anything too awkward. Do this for each social network you are putting your link in.

Step 3: Put the link in bitly, then put that link in your social network

Put a link for each social network in bitly. It will track the number of clicks and at which times the link is clicked for each particular link. Next, put your shortened bitly Facebook link in Facebook, your Google+ bitly link in Google+, etc.

Step 4: Let bitly do the work for you.

After you have shared each link, you can sit back and let bitly do the tracking. You can check back to bitly whenever you want to see which links are getting clicks at which times. While there are many ways to track clicks for your pages, I have found bitly to work very well, and be extremely easy to do.

What To Do When You Get a Bad, And Untrue, Review

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 01:08:00 -0400

Recently at work, one of our apps was given a bad review. This was extremely surprising, as I have been doing marketing for this particular application for a little over a year to see the app get a ton of press, none of it bad. When I read the review, I found that the negative things the reviewer had written were blatantly untrue. When you find yourself in this kind of scenario, here is what to do:

1. Check yourself: Mistakes happen. No one’s product is 100% perfect every single time. There is a chance that the particular product the reviewer had was faulty. Before you do anything, if possible, double check internally to see if everything was working with the product when it was being reviewed. This peace of mind will decide what the next step you take is.

2. Connect with the Reviewer: The next step is to reach out to the reviewer, and what you say depends on step one. If your product was faulty, had an error, whatever, apologize to the reviewer, and thank them for bringing the issue to your attention. Also, if you are planning on fixing it, say so. Do this publicly, such as a comment on their article. The “closer” to the article, the better. This will let their readers know that yeah, you messed up, but at least you are trying to make it better, and that you really are a great person.

If you are sure that the statements written about your product are just plain untrue, then you have to clarify the truth with both the reviewer and their readers. This way, you still engage them publicly. Again, a comment on the article itself is best, to maximize the chances that the reviewers readers will see your response. When I do a response in this situation, I prefer the Sandwich Approach. This means you thank them for taking the time to review your product, then give your clarification on the untrue part, then thank them again. Comes off as very non-aggressive, but gets your point across.

3. Act classy, act quickly: It is very important to act fast and be a gentleman or lady about the situation. Agility in dealing with the situation is key. This is because the longer you wait to take care of the situation, the more people are going to read the review without your side of the story. You know how on TV when the FBI is dealing with a kidnapping, and they say that after two days the chances of the kidnapped person surviving drop significantly? Yeah, this is kind of like that.

While you may be worked up from the negative and untrue review about your product, always keep classy. If the reviewer accidentally wrote false statements about your product, you will look like a jerk if you get in their face about it. If for some reason there are ulterior motives at work, and it was done more or less on purpose, don’t feed the troll ; just politely say your piece and be done with it. Chances are, they will eat their own credibility, and readers will notice.

Facebook and Gowalla Smart to Check Out of Foursquare Check-in Focus

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 00:38:00 -0400

How often do you check-in to a place you are at? If you do at all, you are one of few according to recent findings that say that only 4% of adults use location based check-in services. Nevertheless, competition has been fierce for which service people use to check-in with; that is, until recently when Facebook and Gowalla decided to let Foursquare win it, which was incredibly wise on their parts.

Gowalla and Facebook Places, who both focused on location check-ins both decided to check out of competing with Foursquare when it started to become clear that Foursquare was winning with their number of users and amount of activity. Gowalla’s 2 million users are dwarfed by Foursquare’s 10 million, and it was becoming clear that Facebook Places was not catching on with only 6% of Facebook users even trying that aspect of the social network.

Rather than fight a losing battle, Gowalla and Facebook Places decided to differentiate. Interestingly enough, they both gravitate toward storytelling. Gowalla recently announced at the 2011 Tech Crunch Disrupt Conference in San Francisco that they are moving away from the check-in focus they had and have now have their eyes on storytelling and travel. While check-ins will still be a feature, they are mainly focusing on users telling stories revolving around locations, and having curated travel guide content for major locations.

Facebook Places is taking advantage of their user’s existing habits with the site; instead of a checking in, users now have the ability to tag their current location. When you post a photo or update your status, it will have the option to have your location turned on. This allows people to do the same thing they are already doing on Facebook, just adding the location aspect.

This was wise of Gowalla and Facebook. They were aware that they weren’t doing well in the competition, so they did something different to not compete. It is always better to not compete than compete, if you can help it. When you think about it, there is nothing to gain from beating someone else for one resource when you can get another resource of similar or better value without having to fight anyone. Another reason why it’s a smart move is because they decided to do something fun. If you ask me, it is a lot more fun to tell a story about how a certain location relates to you rather than just saying you’re physically at a certain place at the moment. Perhaps this new value can boost location based service interest above a meekly 4%.

Sometimes, Done is Better Than Perfect

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:54:00 -0400

When you go to a job interview, most people expect to be asked what they feel one of their weaknesses are, and they usually have a thing ready for a response. That thing for me is that I’m a bit perfectionist. This doesn’t mean that I think I’m perfect. I know for a fact that I’m not, and I do not believe anyone else is either. What it does mean is that once in awhile, I have a hard time drawing the necessary line on a project at “good enough”, and instead want to push forward on the project until it reaches absolute perfection. Here’s a story all you other perfectionists will probably relate to:

Recently, my boss wanted a short competitive table on all of our apps that he could give to possible clients, today. Keep in mind, we have five very different apps, all of which have their own competitors. While I had been doing competitive work very recently on one of our apps, a couple of them I hadn’t had a chance to work on as far as a few months ago, which can be ages in this industry. What my boss was expecting from me was to throw down what I knew in an excel document and email it to him. I did not want to do this. The information I had was not up to date, and I was not about to give him information that wasn’t golden. Competitive work is one of my specialties, and I didn’t want something half-cocked to my name. Because of this I said how that would take so much time, and I couldn’t possibly give him something that day. He was a bit annoyed. A day later though, when I was working furiously on the research, I realized I was being dumb. This was for clients, they wanted it soon. Sure, it might not be the Mona Lisa of competitive analysis’. But, it also didn’t have to be. I hardened up, sent him an excel document with the knowledge I had, and continued the research. Like I should have done in the first place.

So, a note for all my fellow perfectionists out there: Get over it. Sometimes, done is better than perfect. People won’t judge you for doing what needs to be done. You will have other opportunities to create gloriously perfect things. Sincerely, a fellow perfectionist.

When Opting-In is Inappropriate

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 00:21:00 -0400

As a rule of thumb, when it comes to having your users promoting your product in some way, or receiving some form of promotion of yours to their email, you let them opt-in to that. It’s common sense. Sometimes, you still see some companies trying to trick people—the ones that are taking a chance on their product or service—into promoting their company for them or receiving promotional materials. Recently, there was a service that tried to do this, which resulted in them getting shot down by Mark Zuckerberg himself. See the Facebook wall post below:

“That’s lame”, says Mark. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

This kind of opt-in is deceiving, and ultimately bad for the brand. For one, “I just got into Chill and it’s awesome. Come chill and watch some videos with me”? Pun alert! No one talks like that. For two, if you are just starting out, do you really want to screw up your brand right from the beginning with marketing slime? For three, if your product is awesome, especially if it has a social component to it, people will share how awesome it is on their own—most likely better than you will.

So don’t be, as Zuckerberg puts it, lame. Let people opt-in to sharing about your product. It will pay off in the long run.

PS- see their blog article explaining their side of the story. I applaud them for paying attention to people who talk about their product on Facebook, and then making the responsible choice.

Twitter Followers Are Not Pokemon Cards

Sun, 07 Aug 2011 22:46:00 -0400

Recently, there was a story in the news about how it is suspected that Newt Gingrich bought the vast majority of his Twitter followers. This conclusion has come after a report that only 8% of his 1.3 million followers are verified human beings, which is lower than most Twitter accounts. Newt denies that he paid for followers. Whether he did or not, I would recommend to anyone doing some sort of marketing via Twitter that you do not pay someone to have a bunch of accounts follow you. This is not only because it makes you look like a complete loser when people eventually found out what you did; it is because having a large number of real or fake Twitter followers, in and of itself, means nothing.

Some people look at Twitter followers as they would see Pokémon cards. If you were a kid in the early 2000’s, then you most likely collected Pokémon cards. Most people didn’t even know exactly how to play the card game, they just tried to have a deck that had many Pokémon in it, and Pokémon with high scoring abilities. The mindset one would have when purchasing Twitter followers is very similar to that of Pokémon card collectors; if they have a bunch of followers, or followers that are really cool, then that means they are winning at Twitter marketing. This logic is perfect—if you are in a contest to have the greatest number of followers or to have the coolest followers. Otherwise, if you are trying to use Twitter as a branding tool, or a way to easily communicate with the users of your product or service, or some other legitimate marketing effort, you will want to focus on engagement with your followers and providing content that is relevant to your followers.

To understand the reasoning behind this, you must think about why you are using Twitter for branding, raising awareness, communication with your market, etc. Having a bunch of followers does not mean you are reaching many people with your content. If you are not relevant to your followers, your tweets will get lost in the large ocean of tweets in their home column. For people to see you, you must be relevant enough for them to make a point of seeing you. This can be as involved as them searching for you in Twitter for them to satisfy their curiosity of what your brand has been up to lately, or as uninvolved as checking a category list they have placed you in. If your tweets are followed by many people, but no one actually sees you, then you are essentially tweeting to a black hole. The key to successfully marketing on Twitter is having some sort of positive affect on those that follow you. If you are providing value on Twitter by creating relevant tweets and engaging with your audience, then your brand will be held positively in their minds. While saying “I am very relevant and engage often with my Twitter followers” may not be as fun to say as “I have 1.3 million followers exactly! See look the number is on my profile page!”, treating your followers as people and not Pokémon cards will likely get you much farther in your marketing efforts.

Do Competitive Research like a Detective, Not a Spectator

Fri, 05 Aug 2011 01:21:00 -0400

If you have a marketing degree, it is likely that you have done a competitive analysis. You have probably done more of them than you would care to remember. In my case, I have done some form of competitive analysis for almost every marketing class I had taken (they didn’t feel it was necessary to sneak one into market research). What was shocking to me when I got a job in the real world was that in all those marketing classes, my classmates and I were doing the competitive analyses wrong. Not completely wrong, mind you; when it came to practicing the general concept of researching the market your product is in and saying how you should differentiate, we were dead on. But, the way we did the research part was flawed, and probably why that part was incredibly boring to do. Now, I work at a company that makes socially-enabled web and mobile applications, so the actual features of a competitor’s product can be quite hard to find when doing research due to the general secrecy of the industry. This means that you have to do a little detective work. To help you be the Sherlock Holmes of competitive research, I would suggest keeping these three things in mind:

The website is a lie. The research my classmates and I did for a competitive analysis consisted of going to the competitor’s website and writing down what we saw there. This was stupid. The reason for this is that many times, companies will exaggerate what their product’s features do, or allow you to assume it does something that it can’t do. I am not saying that you should not go to the company’s website when researching a product, you most definitely should. But just try to get the gist of it, and unless it is being very specific, take it with a grain of salt. Something on a competitor’s website you should pay attention to is screenshots. Most of the time, the screenshot of an app will not be doctored, and can reveal many clues to you very quickly. What is even better than a screenshot is a video. There is usually a demo video you can find either on the company’s website or through a quick YouTube search.

Third party coverage is key. Since you can’t always trust the company’s website, it is necessary to get all the information you can from third-party sources. One great way to do this is looking for mentions of them in news articles. For this, doing a search on Google News is a quick way to find numerous articles. As paranoid as it may sound, you sometimes have to be wary even of these. This is because the article can sometimes be a press release, which includes information that the company wanted in newspaper format. If you see multiple news sources that all have the same or similar article, it’s a press release. While they can still be useful, try to look for information inside of the article that the news source wrote themselves to find a third party perspective. When checking out the news articles, be sure to look at the comments on the articles. Since these are usually all third party sources, it is a great way to get people’s perspectives on the product and learn what people’s experiences with it are like. For a similar type of information, check out reviews of the product.

How would you say it? When looking into the different forms of writing, pictures, or video, always be thinking. “if this were me presenting the product, how would I show this?” When creating promotional material, you wouldn’t just show random parts of the product in arbitrary ways. You would decide what would be the best attributes for whichever benefit you are trying to show, and communicate it in a way that is best suited. If you are thinking like the people that made the copy for the website, wrote the mention in the press, or created the video, it will make it that much easier to add up the clues you get from your research to make a reasonable assumption about your competitor’s product or service features.

Now that I keep these things in mind when researching our competitors, it is a lot more fun now. Instead of copying something from a website, I now get to do detective work. But, a marketer’s work is never done, now you have to take the information you found and analyze it in a way that can make it useful; but that is for another blog post.

The What, Why, and How of Personal Branding

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 17:57:00 -0400

What is Personal Branding?

The other day, I heard a co-worker talking about someone he knew that was always tweeting. He scoffed, saying “he’s really into building his ‘personal brand’”, with quote fingers around “personal brand”. Personal branding is exactly what it sounds like—it’s a brand, like a company would have, but it’s for yourself instead. Something people sometimes get confused about when talking about personal branding is that the things that make up your brand can only be professional things, so basically just your LinkedIn. This is not true. Your personal brand is made up of all different parts of your life that others see, whether it be professional, fun, good, or evil. The phrase “building a personal brand” is relatively new, but the concept itself is not. For example, look at General George S. Patton.

Patton was a badass General in WWII. He was known for being tough to the point where some people thought he was a little crazy. This was his personal brand. Even people that had never met him knew what to expect from him. He is seen by many as stubborn, competitive, and eccentric. He had such a strong personal brand, they even made a movie about him in 1970. It’s an awesome and inspiring movie, I recommend it.

How about another example, of someone more recent. Let’s take a look at this character:

Yeah, you know who that is. That’s Lindsey Lohan. This great American blown out, drama smothered, more-money-than-brains once popular actress now failing thief and generally ridiculous person has a strong brand, but not necessarily a positive one. Most people have some characteristics that come to mind when they think of her. Some things that come to mind for me are irresponsible, hopeless drug addict, and queen of first world problems.

Why should you go about building a personal brand?

You may be thinking “Michael, how would building my personal brand actually help me with anything? It just seems like some geeky marketing thing”. While it may be a geeky marketing thing, it is still something cool that will actually help you with things. Here are some ways it could help you:

Self-Realization: In order to build your personal brand, you have to figure out what that brand is. Your personal brand is made up of things you do, groups you may belong to, or aspects about your personality. You may not be able to think of things right off the top of your head, which is okay. Most people can’t. I suggest just making a list of all the things you do. Remember, this includes everything, not just things from your professional life. For some people, this exercise may be a little disheartening, because they don’t have many things on their list, or they realize the only things they do have on list are boring, like watching TV or stalking people on Facebook. If this happens to you, it’s all good, because it means you have an opportunity to decide what you actually want your personal brand to be, and then do those things.

Excellent First Impressions: As you probably already know, first impressions are very crucial. When you are being considered for a job, have a job and people are considering doing business with you, or even sometimes when people first casually meet you and find you intriguing, they will likely look you up on the internet in one way or another, but likely on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Since you can really only get a snapshot of a person’s life using these services, many people will keep a blog, where you can get a deeper view of what the person is about. If you don’t have content out there that shows your personal brand, people will just take their best guess, or forget about you.

Easier to Be Found: the more content you have out there, the easier it is for you to be found. Without delving into a huge post on SEO, a basic principle is that if there is more content about you, you personally will be higher up on a Google search of your name, rather than other people with your same or similar name. Different people will search for you different ways, so it is best to not just Facebook or just Twitter. Try to have a variety of ways people could find out about you.

It’s fun!: It can seem like a lot of work if you haven’t put much effort into clarifying and building your personal brand; and in some ways it is. It takes more thinking and working than lounging about watching Netflix or gaming it up. But, it is a lot more satisfying, and after a while it just becomes habit.

How to be Awesome at Personal Branding:

Now that you know why building a personal brand for yourself is an excellent thing to do, you are probably wanting to know how to go about it. It’s really easy, so no worries. It really is more fun than hard.

Figure out what your personal brand is: This is where the self-realization reason above comes in. There are many different ways to go about deciding what your personal brand is or should be. I am a visual person, so I went that route and made a mind map of what I believe (or rather, what I strive for) my personal brand to be. With simply writing down your thoughts on what you want to define yourself, you can create your personal branding. Like I said, it’s easy. Not building any rockets here

Build it: Once you have your personal brand figured out, it’s time to start building it. This means creating some content via Facebook, tweeting, a blog, and even commenting on articles related to your brand. If your brand that you have designed for yourself is close to what you are already doing, then the only extra thing you have to do is “document” it. This doesn’t mean that your Facebook and Twitter accounts can only have content directly related to your brand. You can feel free to still have some of those “driving to Bellingham gonna eat all of the Pel Minis!!” posts that have little or nothing to do with your personal brand, but just make sure that there is enough content mixed in there that a person who doesn’t know you will have a decent idea of your brand in general.

Keep at it: Many people think personal branding is an excellent thing to practice, and are very consistent about content for a week or two. Then, sadly, they get busy and forget about it. But keep with it! The trick is for it to just become a habit. Once it becomes your regular behavior, you will be branding and not even thinking about it.

And then that’s it! It really is not as hard as it sounds, especially with all of the free services like twitter and blogging that are available to us. It is easier than ever before for anyone to effectively brand themselves and be found. So, the when you hear a co-worker making fun of someone for building their personal brand, you know what to do: use the experience to build your personal brand. Always be branding.

PS- A big thank you to Andrew Dumont and Derek Johnson. They taught me about the importance and art of personal branding when I was back at Western Washington University, and they are experts at it.

It Just Works

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 02:26:00 -0400

Most of you know who the person is in the photo above is. I, like many, are inspired by his ingenuity. Now, I wouldn’t call myself an apple fan boy. I don’t even own an iPhone, I manage to get by with, dare I say it…a feature phone. But I do admire the style.

At this year’s WWDC keynote, one of the things Steve Jobs kept saying about the iCloud he was showing off is that “it just works”. Having something “just work” means that the user doesn’t think about it, but everything works out fine. Some people may take notice of the way an app “just works” and rejoice in it, but for most people, it will likely be something they don’t notice, but they feel slightly pleasant about it. If something doesn’t “just work” though, it will likely incite a blaring hell-fire rage in your users. Let me explain.

Picture this: You decide to check out a new coffee shop by where you work. You walk in the door, and step up to the counter. You tell the barista you would like a triple grande mocha. She looks puzzled. She asks “Sir, do you mean a ternate fairish cocoa bean joe?” Now you’re puzzled and kind of annoyed that the barista didn’t know what your favorite drink is, so you just say “sure” because you don’t have that much time waste. Then, the barista gives you a blue Icee and says “That will be $9.99.” And then starts complaining about Casey Anthony or something.

That’s what a it feels like to have something not “just work”. It is a very confusing and uncomfortable experience, because it is unexpected and unfamiliar to the user. On the other hand, going back to my silly story above, if you were able to just go up to the counter, order your delicious mocha heavenly goodness, pay a reasonable amount and get on with your day, you would have felt different. You probably wouldn’t think “Oh my gosh the process of buying that coffee was the the most crazy-cool and life-altering experience I have ever had!”, but you may go back there the next time you could use a mocha.

The moral of this story to marketers in the tech industry is no matter what your product or service, don’t make your users think. They don’t like that. It’s hard. And uncomfortable. Put some thought into what would be the most natural path for the user, and assume they have never used or heard of it before. The best way I have found to do this is to have fun with it! I know, terribly cheesy. But nonetheless, you have to be in their mindset, and hopefully, they will have fun (or at least feel relatively at ease) using your app.

Are You Selling or Performing?

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 01:42:00 -0400

Every once in awhile, in one of my marketing classes we would watch a TED talk video. I remember they always had a thought provoking message that made them great for class discussions afterwards. Always learned a lot.

Recently, there was this TED talk with Nathan Myhrvold about his photography of cross-sections of food cooking.

If you check out the comments, you can see that many people felt a little cheated. Nathan references pages from his book as visual aides throughout the presentation, and even went as far as to bring the book out and mention the water-proof pages. The audience watches TED talks to be moved by big ideas, yet on this episode they were being sold to! Marketing Slime!

But wait. When you read the description of the episode, it says:

Cookbook author (and geek) Nathan Myhrvold talks about his magisterial work, “Modernist Cuisine” — and shares the secret of its cool photographic illustrations, which show cross-sections of food in the very act of being cooked.

Kind of hard for a guy to talk about his photographic illustrations without showing his photographic illustrations. Nonetheless, the masses of TED are angry; and it makes sense.

While Nathan didn’t do his presentation under false pretenses, it is just not what people usually see when they watch TED talks. Its all about the context, and what the audience expects to see. For example, when a well-known actor goes on a talk show, their upcoming movie is always mentioned. They even prepare clips of the movie for the audience to view on the show. In this situation, the shameless plug is accepted, if not encouraged. On the other hand, if my boss and I were to go to a cyberbullying-awareness conference as guest speakers and talk about our app that helps to avert cyberbullying and all the wonderful features it offers, it would not look very good on us. In that situation, people aren’t expecting speakers to talk about their product.

So stay classy. Remember the context you are in, and present accordingly. Give the people what they want.

Why Google+ is not the much awaited "Facebook Killer"

Sun, 10 Jul 2011 21:54:00 -0400

You can’t get on Facebook or Twitter without reading a bunch of desperate people begging for Google+ invites. I am by no means judging, I am guilty of sending out status updates and tweets hoping that one of my friends had been graced by the Google gods with an account, and would want to pay it forward in the form of an invite. Eventually I got one from someone at work, and I was able to play with it myself.

Something I noticed (and that I’m sure you have already noticed yourself, or read about it from the tidal wave of press about it) is that at it’s core, it is built around the idea that people are scared to share everything with everyone, like they do on Facebook. Of course, there are lists, but most people have too busy of a Facebook stalking lineup planned to be bothered with the likes of those. Features like forcing the user to put the friends they add into circles right of the bat and making the user actually choose which circle sees their status updates can make for a more intimate sharing experiences. This is vastly different from the power of brash self-promotion that Facebook grants it’s users.

This is exactly why Google+ is not the long awaited “Facebook Killer” everyone has been expecting (hoping for?), and why Facebook will not stomp out Google+ like it’s Orkut. They will both get along fine, but people will just use them differently. When people want to promote themselves to the world, they will use Facebook. It will be where people manage their personal brand. Google+ will be where people go when they purposefully want to connect with people. When you are walking down the street and you see a dive bar that reminds you of some long standing inside joke you have with a specific group, Google+ will be where you take the photo to share. When it comes to pictures from the concert you just went to, status updates about how you just went on a jog, or basically anything that involves your interests that you feel reflect positively on you, there will always be the big blue behemoth that is Facebook.