Facebook Timeline Ads: A Gift to Google+

Well this morning I checked my Facebook Timeline to see if my latest social apps are still working.  I don’t want to recommend my clients use these features then only to find out that they are not working. So we test … test … test.  In this morning’s testing I find I have new intruders, dare I say interlopers, in my Timeline stream.

Exhibit One – The Interloping Ads!

Ads Are My Friends

I know this sounds strange coming from a person who counsels small and medium sized companies on how to use internet advertising to their advantage, but putting things in MY STREAM seems like a violation to me.  I fully understand the left or right hand side of the page (depending on which Facebook page you are looking at) will hold their ads.  And i want those ads to be relevant, or contextual, to the content that is on that page.  Actually, I’m counting on it.

I and admire Facebook for allowing me to turn off the setting which shows my name under ads.  Even though I may have liked a product, if I’m not getting paid to promote it, why give them that for free.

What does bother me is showing ads in my stream.  The ads so far have been nothing about me.  Nothing about the story i am trying to tell about me.  So why does Facebook now think it’s going to make me want to use their product more to continue to build that story?

In Walks Google+

I see Google+ as walking away with a win on this.  I think this violation will cause many to search out alternate solutions to telling their story.

What do you think?

Related articles

• Facebook timeline your whole life – Lifebook anyone? (marketing.yell.com)
• Facebook Timeline – what it means for your business (simplybusiness.co.uk)
• The Facebook timeline feature and what it means for your page (marketing.yell.com)
• Using Facebook Timeline for Online Branding (blogherald.com)
• Facebook Timeline for Pages: Why is this so hard? (alainawiens.wordpress.com)
• Here’s what your Google+ posts would look like in Facebook’s Timeline view (thenextweb.com)

Continuous Learning: New Podcast List

Image via Wikipedia

So if you are anything like me, you are in submission to the fact that there is more to learn in this world then you currently know.  The truly wise among us acknowledge that our current knowledge placed on the scale of all the knowledge will always find us wanting for the remainder of our days.

The trick is to stay on the cutting edge of information that helps us achieve our goals.  One of the ways I have tried to stay sharp on specific topics is by using podcasts.  I currently use iTunes (most convenient at this time)  and my Android phone, with the help of iSync.    There are a host of podcasts, mostly free but some cost nominal amounts, on iTunes that cover a wide range of topics.

New Updates on my Listening List

So here are latest additions to my listening list:

• BeanCast – deep dive into marketing topics
• EntreLeadership – Dave Ramsey‘s leadership and business podcast
• Let’s Make Mistakes – design but irreverent with some foul language.
• Marketing Over Coffee – quick ‘on they way to work drive’ worth of internet marketing news
• Social Triggers Insiders – on of the authors I follow on Google+
• This Is Your Life – leadership podcast

Dropped from my Listening List

• No More Weak Days – Daily prayer and Bible reading.  Great concept but had a hard time struggling with the KJ and Message format in their reading plan. “1 Year Daily Audio Bible” is still my preferred choice for daily scripture reading (listening).

Lesson’s Learned

The important thing is to keep learning!  Don’t stop.  If you are starting a new project, search out a podcast and listen to it while driving or exercising.

I would love to hear about podcasts you have found helpful in your daily routine.  Share them in the comments.

Good Hunting.

Related articles

• Import iTunes Music Playlists to Android, Sync iTunes with Android over WiFi (ravidhavlesha.wordpress.com)
• Need help subscribing to podcast in Android (ask.metafilter.com)
• Subscribe to my award winning Marketing Podcast series. It is free! (garybembridge.com)
• DoubleTwist Adds Podcast Catalogue (geeky-gadgets.com)
• Import iTunes Music Playlists to Android, Sync iTunes with Android over WiFi (madrasgeek.com)
• Evernote Podcast #33 – Heavy Breathing Episode (evernote.com)

Unclear? Use a Twitter Summary!

Image via Wikipedia

Have you ever just stopped and thought, “OK, exactly, what am I doing here?”  Have you ever been asked to explain something and found yourself ramblings and your thoughts came out incoherent and and your thoughts are without any cohesion and almost on the verge of being labeled ‘verbal diarrhea’? (run on sentence intended for effect folks!!)

Force Some Discipline

There is a way you can attack this problem.  This idea comes from a book I’ve recently read call “Drive” by Daniel Pink.  (Good Read! Recommend it!) It’s one of the suggestions in the back of the book which you could easily overlook and just skiip by if you are not careful.

The concept is simple.  Use a tool, like Twitter, to force you to craft a message in 140 characters.  Twitter will only publish 140 characters of a person’s tweet.  It provides a nice clean interface with a gentile reminder of how many characters you have remaining.  It also provides you a negative number if you go over 140 characters, thus showing you how much you have to trim to have your entire message included in the twitter stream.  Twitter simply provides us a clean and straightforward page with the needed feedback to accomplish this task.

Twitter is not the focus

You could use any tool that gives you the feedback to understand how close you are to 140 characters.  Even the 140 characters are arbitrary and simply based on the fact that Twitter has this limitation.  I could also use any word processor that provide the basic functionality of ‘word count‘ .  You could write a simple Visual Basic program in minutes to perform the same task.  The tool is not the important factor here.  It is your ability to boil down your message to 140 charaters.

In the past we’ve talked about using elevator speeches, but this is more intense and to the point.  Only using 140 characters to create focus.

Twitter Summary Application

• Front Office Staff – image the value you would bring if your responses were pithy and to the point.  How many of us have wished we met some of these staff in our travels.  Only to find out 2 minutes into a question answer session you picked the wrong person to ask ‘where the bathroom was?’ (exaggeration intended)
• Meeting Prep – Wouldn’t we all like to come into a meeting and with a short burst from the moderator / facilitator know how much I need to pay attention?  In fact, I could then text my assistent to pull me out of the meeting in let’s say 10 minutes.  (Note to self: I bet I could write a quick program so that when I text mesage a certain code to it, it would then rendomly generate a ’emergency text message‘ to my department member’s phones  so I can get them all the hell out of there before they waste another minute not doing their jobs!) (exaggeration intended)
• Event Planning – When I plan out an event, each hour has something it needs to accomplish.  I would suggest having a twitter summary for each hour so that each hour can be easily reviewed by the facilitation staff and the owner / sponsor of the event.
• Calendar Management – wouldn’t we all like to look at a calendar event and not ask the question – what in the world is this here for and who authorized it to be on my calendar?  Well a twitter summary would help there also.
• Instructions to Staff – I’ve also heard this one called ‘commander’s intent‘ as well.  It would be a short burst stating what is the ultimate outcome or goal is for an activity.  Sometimes these are needed so that if something goes wrong, the team, using autonomy, can make adjustments to still hit the mark by the end of the assignment.
• Classroom Setting – excellent use of a few seconds to start out the class.  Let everyone know what’s going to happen in the class for the next hour to three hours.  (Also see Meeting Prep above – for you resourceful students – but don’t try it in my class – I have you turn off your phones)

Taken to an Extreme

Anything could be taken to an extreme.  For instance, imaging you walk into your local Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).  You ask, what you believe to be, a genuinely sincere, simple, innocent, open ended question and the response you get from behind the counter is “No”.  Not withstanding it was an open ended question, this all to common event, could simply be all the DMV’s in the world preemptively taking my advice to this pithy extreme before I even make this post available to the public (although I have my suspicions that this is not the case and something else might be going on)   So be mindful that this advice could also be taken to an extreme and you would want to avoid that s well.

Would love to hear how you could apply Twitter Summaries.  Leave a post and let me know.

Good Hunting!

Related articles

• The art of complaining in 140 characters or less (swiss-miss.com)
• On the benefits of #macroblogging, observing a #Twitter stupidity, and the return of #stopshortening (dropsafe.crypticide.com)
• Don’t spend hours tweeting, says Twitter co-founder (telegraph.co.uk)
• How Twitter Can Improve Your Management In 140 Characters Or Less (businessinsider.com)
• Tell us about ‘the moment’ in 140 characters or fewer (timesunion.com)

Photo Booth: Icebreaker for All Day Events

Have you ever been to an all day, or all weekend, event and just dreaded the beginning of each day’s start.  The awkwardness of getting to know new people, or people you don’t see often.  The desire of some to just keep their distance and slide into a chair and coast into the event,  hoping their social boundaries aren’t broadened.

Answer: Add a Photo Both

At our last family new year’s eve party, Outa-Tha-Box DJ service came to show off their stuff.  One of the items they brought was their Photo Booth.  After talk with Outa-Tha-Box owner, Paul Compton, about how he handles the Photo Booth Rental.  I learned that the photo booth can be rented by itself, and this got me to thinking.

Have a photo booth at your event to start off each morning.  This is a great item to break the ice.  The photo booth often comes with props.  The printer can print two strips, one for the participants, the second for event host / coordinator.  I have not seen a person come out of the booth without smiling.

Starting Ideas

Here are some contest ideas on what to do with the photo booth at your event.

1. Most funny face – event attendees get to vote
2. Most Faces – unique photos without repeating partners
3. Best Costume – event attendees get to vote
4. New Friend Game – you must take a picture with someone you don’t know

Just think … you too could have countless memories, like this one with my brother at our New Years Eve Party … at your next event!

Yes that's me on the right!

Other Facilitation Posts:

• Exceptionalism: Focus on the Never
• Start, Stop, Continue – Reviewed
• Make Some Magic

Related articles

• Bring in 2012 in a Long Island Photo Booth by Incredibooths (prweb.com)
• BIG MIRACLE – Big Icebreaker (polarprisca.com)
• Icebreaker Gives Outdoor Apparel a Street-Smart Twist for Spring 2012 (treehugger.com)
• Congress and White House differ over icebreakers (sfgate.com)
• Take Creepy Singles Out Of The Equation With ‘Plus One’ (prweb.com)

Idea Selection

In my posts “Start, Stop, Continue” and “Exceptionalism: Focus on the Never” I talk about brainstorming techniques that help organizations choose new ideas to improve on their environment. In the above post, the author fivewhys,  gives us some other ways of selecting ideas.

Good Hunting

Related articles

• Brainstorming – Increasing Creativity and the Quantity and Usefulness of Ideas (nextstepconsult.wordpress.com)
• How We Brainstorm (markpeterdavis.com)
• First, Stop that Brainstorming? (laf.ee)
• Why The New Yorker’s Claim That Brainstorming “Doesn’t Work” Is An Overstatement And Possibly Wrong (bobsutton.typepad.com)
• Eight Tips for Fixing Your Brainstorming (leadershipforgood.org)

Five Whys

This is part 5 in my series on brainstorming techniques

We’ve covered a lot of ground in helping your groups create a lot of ideas. But what do you do with them all? And how do you make sure that the ones you leave behind really are dud ideas? There seem to be two main camps here

• choose your favourite, based on gut feel
• evaluate all ideas according to some fairly simple criteria

View original post 580 more words

Make it Easy for Customers

Created with http://www.qrstuff.com/

The other day I was helping a new client plan out marketing materials for an upcoming event and asked if he was using QR Codes on all of his materials.  I explained that many people are now scanning them and then using them to do research or deal with retention issues associated with information overload.

The items in your QR Code should be:

1. Direct link to the landing page for the event or product promoted at that event so the visitor doesn’t have to hunt down what they were interested in.
2. Your phone number
3. Your Email Address
4. other pertinent information that you wanted stored in their contact list
   1. hours of operation
   2. Your name
   3. Your Address
   4. Other web sites you want them to know about (blogs, product micro sites, etc.)

Oh, and if the back of your business card isn’t already in use, put a QR Code there.  It shows you respect their time by having them avoid manually typing the data into their contact database.

Is It Important?

Well if  you don’t think this is important enough to add to your marketing material, maybe this article might change your mind:

Half of U.S. shoppers rely on phones for in-store research

Good Hunting!

Related articles

• How to use QR codes at events (clairesouchet.wordpress.com)
• 9 Unique Ways to Generate Leads With QR Codes (hubspot.com)
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• How To Create A QR Code [VIDEO TUTORIAL] (seanclark.com)
• Are We Really Ready for QR Codes? (forbes.com)

Google: Learning, Growing, and Attacking Itself

Image by Bruce Clay, Inc via Flickr

One of the guys I follow in my Reader , Gerrit Eicker, had this post “Google’s Graveyard III” (a potion of the text provided below) and it got me to thinking about another post I shared recently “6 of Apples Greatest Mistakes“, in which I suggest that mistakes are only mistakes unless we learn from them.

Marketing Warfare

I want to throw on top of these thoughts another possible activity that is going on: Google is ATTACKING ITSELF to keep it’s leader position.  My contention is that they are following the marketing principles laid out in Al Ries and Jack Trout‘s “Marketing Warfare” text, and specifically “Defensive Warfare”.

Defensive Warfare as laid out in the text is as follows:

• Only the market leader should consider playing defense.
• The best defensive strategy is the courage to attack yourself.
• Strong competitive move should always be blocked.

For the sake of brevity, I’m going to layout two assumptions here: 1) Google is the leader in the industry for cloud solutions, 2) through the use of acquisitions the are ‘blocking strong competitive moves’.  These two point could be posts in themselves so I just want to state them and move on, if you wish to comment on these assumptions, fine, but this post wishes to focus on the act of attacking yourself as a form of marketing strategy.

Focusing on Google+: Obsolete Your Old Products

One of the principles in Marketing Warfare is that you need the courage to attack yourself.  In this case by introducing new products which cause old products to become obsolete.  In this way, you are creating a moving target for those that are trying to overtake you or one of the products you have created.

Now through on top of this the ability to absorb obsolete product capabilities into the new product, and all the new capabilities already in the new product, and you have the ability to keep your advisaries constantly trying to play catch up.

And as an added bonus, you can take the lessons learned from the previous product (in this case Google Buzz let’s say) and use them to refine your approach to market, or customer service, logistics, or whatever the lesson provides, to the new product.

A fall sweep

10/14/2011 10:03:00 AM

We aspire to build great products that really change people’s lives, products they use two or three times a day. To succeed you need real focus and thought—thought about what you work on and, just as important, what you don’t work on. It’s why we recently decided to shut down some products, and turn others into features of existing products.

Here’s the latest update on what’s happening:

• Code Search, which was designed to help people search for open source code all over the web, will be shut down along with the Code Search API on January 15, 2012.
• In a few weeks we’ll shut down Google Buzz and the Buzz API, and focus instead on Google+. While people obviously won’t be able to create new posts after that, they will be able to view their existing content on their Google Profile, and download it usingGoogle Takeout.
• Jaiku, a product we acquired in 2007 that let users send updates to friends, will shut down on January 15, 2012. We’ll be working to enable users to export their data from Jaiku.
• Several years ago, we gave people the ability to interact socially on iGoogle. With our new focus on Google+, we will remove iGoogle’s social features on January 15, 2012. iGoogle itself, and non-social iGoogle applications, will stay as they are.
• The University Research Program for Google Search, which provides API access to our search results for a small number of approved academic researchers, will close on January 15, 2012.

In addition, later today the Google Labs site will shut down, and as previously announced, Boutiques.com and the former Like.com websites will be replaced by Google Product Search.Changing the world takes focus on the future, and honesty about the past. We learned a lot from products like Buzz, and are putting that learning to work every day in our vision for products like Google+. Our users expect great things from us; today’s announcements let us focus even more on giving them something truly awesome.Posted by Bradley Horowitz, Vice President, Product

Share with me your thoughts or any other examples of companies using the same Defensive Marketing as Leaders in their industry.

Good Hunting

Related articles

• News: Google to shut Google Buzz (vikypedia.in)
• Google Axes More Services: Jaiku, Buzz, Code Search & More (techcrunch.com)
• A fall sweep (googleblog.blogspot.com)
• Google Will Discontinue Google Buzz and Code Search (googlesystem.blogspot.com)
• Google Product Shutdown of the Day (geeks.thedailywh.at)

6 of Apples Greatest Mistakes

With all the ‘Steve Jobs‘ posts flooding the internet, this one caught my eye.  It is not a Apple bash piece but rather a great object lesson for those that get caught up in the “Aim, Aim, Aim, Ready, Aim, Aim, Fire” mode.

By Scott M. Fulton, III / October 6, 2011 2:03 PM

Image via Wikipedia

This is not an Apple-bashing piece. It is also not an attempt to cut an American icon down to size at a time when were remembering the magnificent contributions of its fallen founder. This is about how failure makes us better.Ive lost count of the number of times Ive heard, seen, or read comparisons of Steve Jobs to Thomas Edison since early yesterday evening. Jobs did not invent anything – not the personal computer, not the MP3 player, not the tablet. But besides that fact, there are certain other stark similarities. One: Jobs, like Edison, was a fierce competitor who sought to control not only the delivery channel for his products, but the market surrounding those products. Two: Like the finest scientist, Jobs studied his failures and Apples very carefully, and unlike Microsoft, built his next success upon the smoking ruins of his failures.More Steve Jobs Stories6 of Apples Greatest MistakesSteve Jobs Legacy In the Pantheon of Great American InnovatorsFrom Silicon Valley to Bahrain, the Web Mourns Steve JobsA Great User Experience: The Web Legacy of Steve JobsWhat Steve Meant Back ThenReaders will likely remind me that certain of the

via 6 of Apples Greatest Mistakes.

Marathon Not Sprint

As I mention in my “Failure is not a Title” post, we need to look at things as a long process that we learn from, a Marathon if you will, not a 100 yard dash.  Yes, the above mentioned items are on the bottom of some outhouse of ideas, but the industry learned from then and evolved into what we have today.

Good Hunting

Related articles

• Think Different – The Legacy of Steve Jobs (legallyeasy.rocketlawyer.com)
• Steve Jobs Reinvented What It Means to be Human (forbes.com)
• An Analogy of Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs (nytimes.com)

Failure is not a Title

Not to long ago, I got into a pointless debate with my brother (you know the kind, where one brother takes one side and the other takes another and you’ll be damned if you let him win an argument) about the topic of people’s desire to change their lives.  We began talking about how “some people just don’t want to succeed” because they don’t try hard enough.

My point was that fear of failure is a strong driving force to those that want to change but don’t want to risk failure.  Even the thought of failure can drive someone to avoid a positive experience by suddenly finding hours of busy work. People wants to have a better life but the fear of failing at something drives them in a direction that produces exactly the opposite.  Then I found this post from Seth Godin and it rang true with me, they take the failure personal.

How else are you supposed to take it?

“Don’t take it personally.”

Image via CrunchBase

This is tough advice. Am I supposed to take it like a chair? Sometimes it seems as though the only way to take it is personally. That customer who doesn’t like your product (your best work) or that running buddy who doesn’t want to run with you any longer…

Here’s the thing: it’s never personal. It’s never about you. How could it be? That person doesn’t truly know you, understand what you want or hear the voices in your head. All they know is themselves.

When someone moves on, when she walks away or even badmouths you or your work, it’s not personal about you. It’s personal about her. Her agenda, her decisions, her story.

Do your work, the best way you know how. Is there any other option?

via Seth’s Blog: How else are you supposed to take it?.

Learn not Burn

I would advise people to learn from the experience and not get hot over it.  I caught myself the other day taking this advice.  I had someone standing before me very mad (and yes your natural assumption is to assume ‘what did I do to deserve this?’) but I stepped backed and asked myself some questions in the heat of the moment while trying to listen to the person vent:

• What is exactly going on here?
• How did we get to this boiling point?
• Did I really do something to bring this on?
• How can I learn from this?
• What can I do to make this a teachable moment and return the person to the topic of accepting my offer.

We do take things personal.  There is no doubt about it.  If we can learn that we are in a long process and not a one time event, we have the ability to step back and learn from each event.

This is why you’ll hear me say, “Failure is an Event, not a Title”.

Good Hunting

Related articles

• Failure is a Prerequisite for Success (socyberty.com)
• What failure can teach you (iowabiz.com)
• Seth Godin Is Weird (twistimage.com)
• 3 Marketing Lessons from Seth Godin’s New Book “Poke the Box” (hubspot.com)
• Celebrate Failure Since Failing is What Most of Us Do (psychologytoday.com)

Facebook’s Unfriendly Competition Subscriptions

We all, deep down in our souls,  know that Facebook has destroyed the concept of friendship.   Facebook has cheapened the meaning of the word friend, and yet, unwittingly …  somehow, elevated the concept of  “BFF” (best friend foreveeeeer!!!!)

Just the other day, a long time friend came to me apologizing that she had just recently accepted a long forgotten sent Facebook friend request.  She took five minutes explaining how and why she accepts friends in Facebook and said that my friends invitation was simply an oversight and begged for my forgiveness.  My response: “Oh OK, so how you been this week?”

New Competition: Google+ Circles

Not even out of BETA, Google+ has caused some irritation to Facebook.  You can’t help but seeing reviews on the concept of “Google+ Circles” and your ability to project your information to specific circle of people rather then having it pasted to your entire ‘friend list’ in Facebook.  After all, we segment our lives differently then all or nothing.

Google+ calls them “People”, Facebook calls them “Friends”   I can subscribe to people’s feeds in Google+, and yes even narrow that down by creating a sub-set call Circles.  Now in Facebook I can subscribe to ‘someone’ without being a being a friend.

Facebook has introduced a new look to ‘Lists’.  You could always create friend lists, but most people never used them because they were not the easiest to create or maintain.  Now they are more predominant on the screen and they include showing the number of new updates since last time on.  I will post more on this later.

Facebook’s Unfriendly Subscribe Option

Finally, I can follow a person without giving them the false hope that we have somehow become anything other then an non-friend acquaintance, if that.  My casual hook-up with them is simply a matter of convenience to satisfy my natural curiosity of what they have to offer.    Our relationship simply lasts as long as they provide me what I need, and I can drop them as quickly as I met them.  No emotional strings attached!  How nice of Facebook for finally allow such unfriendly relationships.

Subscription Button Info

Here are some things to remember about this new Facebook capability:

• a person must turn this feather on to allow someone to subscribe to them.
• you get to decide how much you want to see from your subscriptions, photo’s only, or how about ‘no more game messages!’ – that’s actually a good thing.
• If you can’t subscribe to someone, just remember “It’s not you, it’s them” and you don’t have to feel left out, no one can then subscribe to that person.
• Facebook Pages have gone through a lot of changes expect more changes to come that way as well.

Good Hunting

Related articles

• Q&A: Sorting Subscriptions in Facebook (gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Facebook Tests Friend Filters to Challenge Google+ Circles (hubspot.com)
• Facebook’s Smart list V/S Google+ Circles (dirtech.wordpress.com)
• Facebook Adds New ‘subscribe’ Button: Watch out Twitter (pcworld.com)
• Have You Activated Facebook Subscriptions Yet? (smallbusinessmavericks.com)