News flash:
“If we cannot become profitable, our financial condition will deteriorate, and we may be unable to achieve our business objectives,” the company wrote in its filing.
These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.
…. you’re supporting your competitor:
I wonder how much money Ask is spending at Google in order to boost their own business. As a business that uses Google AdWords, you could hardly ask for a better endorsement of Google’s services and ads than a direct competitor also using their services.
There were just so many choices for this column. Eventually I went for the one you see above, semi-reminiscent of Neal Postman’s famous anti-TV Amusing Ourselves to Death. But “John Dvorak Writes Good Column; World’s Jaw Drops” was a real possibility.
Dvorak, of course, has been tilting at Macs for some time. Now, apparently, he’s advancing in reverse and shooting some of his outrageous slings and arrows at the second incarnation of the Borg.
To put it simply, Microsoft makes money on Windows and Office, and loses money on everything else. And now … Windows and Office have developed an annoying little cough, are sporting some nastly little red spots, and are complaining of pain in the glutes. Free software on the low end and Mac on the high end are eating their lunch and sticking out their tongue at the former playground bully.
But why the cracks in the giant’s armor? Dvorak, like others, highlights that Microsoft has for over a decade behaved like Hammy in Over the Hedge, a microencephalic squirrel who is distracted and distractible by anything shiny, round, black, white, hard, soft, fat, skinny, blue, or angular … in short, anything at all.
Dvorak’s list is possibly the best-laid-out that I’ve seen, however, and funny besides – it’s certainly worth a read …
Here’s just a few on the money pits he mentions:
A valid point that might be made is that many big companies start hundreds of projects. Just like start-ups, most fail, but the ones that hit, hit big, and finance future growth.
I’m not sure that Microsoft, however, has hit anything out of the park other than its big core franchises. Which might make Microsoft the next bird to cross Randy Johnson’s path.
I already re-tweeted … but I have to post this.
In a great Open Forum post on How to Escape Mundanity (which is actually about how to start your own business), there’s this great quote from Pamela Slim:
If you are in the very early stages of thinking about a business, spend your time getting to know yourself. One of the best things I learned from author Jim Collins is to study yourself as if you were a scientist observing a bug. Pay very close attention to the things that either make you feel great or feel crappy. Note the kind of environment, work, people, topics, industries, schedule, and activities that make you thrive. When you start your business with this awareness, you will feel natural energy and clarity which will make all the next steps of the process like choosing a business idea, figuring out the money, planning your business, identifying your customers, and creating a marketing process a lot easier.
Pamela Slim, you say? Yeah, that’s Pamela escape-from-cubicle-nation Slim.
To me, this quote – and the post – is not so much about becoming an entrepreneur and starting your own business as it’s about finding what you love and doing what you’re passionate about.
That’s escape enough for anyone.
Perhaps you were not aware – innovation is easy. Or at least, so Tom Peters says:
You know, he might actually be right. I love the part about “saviors-in-waiting:”
Those are not the usual suspects when a company starts wondering who will lead them into the promised land.
It’s a truism in Western culture that if you set your goals high, even if you don’t reach them you’ve gotten far. That’s not necessarily true in business or project management.
“Boiling the ocean” is a word-picture for trying too hard, attempting too much:
When a company boasts that it is going to sell to the whole world, or transform its industry, it is often accused of “boiling the ocean.”
Companies are well-known for this kind of hubris, but the same can be true for an individual or a project.
The sad reality for those who want to change the world in one fell swoop is that change comes about one decision at a time, one relationship at a time, one person at a time. Sometimes lightning strikes, the stars align, and things happen quicker … and that’s what we all hope for.
But even when lightning does strike, one of two things usually turns out to be true.
It was a fad
Either the base was not built … there was no depth to the change … there was insufficient attention paid to relationships and communication and investment in a core of evangelists, true believers who are also pushing the change …
Or it’s a true movement
The work was done … there was sufficient depth to the movement … the change is real … and it has sustaining power.
The upshot
The upshot is that for sustaining change to happen, the hard yards have to be won. There’s no substitute for the grinding, meticulous work of preparing the soil, watering the plant, and weeding the garden.
Even if lightning strikes and you “get lucky,” without this work the best you’ll be is a one-hit wonder.
Measuring the results of social media marketing efforts has been challenging to say the least.
Five or six years ago, when I was helping start-ups put blogging campaigns together to kindle the development of user communities, I didn’t really have a clear idea how to measure ROI. About the only things we measured were visits and sales … which wasn’t too bad, but was only a very small part of the story. And based on our unsophisticated set-up (plus lack of Google Analytics) we really had no clue what the connection between visits and sales exactly was.
Today there are plenty of other ways to measure social media marketing results. Here are just a few, starting with quantitative measures:
A less obvious measure is the number of comments on your videos. While you’re checking that, be sure to get a sense of the overall tenor of the comments: are they positive, negative, or lukewarm?
More qualitative ….
That’s a fairly quantitative list, but there are some qualitative questions to ask as well.
In the final analysis …
… there is no final analysis. Social media marketing, is, after all, marketing. As such, there is very rarely a one-to-one correlation between input and output.
The reality, however, is that your ability to connect with clients depends on your online footprint, and the quality of your online presence. Are you findable online? Are you where your clients are, online? And if they search for you, do you have both a big enough and targeted enough Google footprint that they can easily find you?
Your online success, and increasingly your business success, relies on the answers to those questions.
If you’re in business, you’ve got competing priorities. I recently was facing a complex fork in the road, and rather than just picking it up … I need to understand the consequences of each direction.
What I needed was a filter to help me compare and contrast multiple competing business investment opportunities. I couldn’t find a good one online, so I made my own.
It’s now on Scribd, so if you find it helpful, feel free to download it and use it yourself.
Here’s an embed of the document, and I’ve got a couple of notes below …
Note:
There’s no scoring mechanism or anything, because I feel strongly that this is just an aide, not a program that you plug information into and presto! there’s the answer. In other words, this filter will not answer the question for you.
What it will do is help you to clarify your thinking and your best data around some key issues that are important to consider before making serious investments in competing directions.
Also:
If you are evaluating more than two options, just download the Word version, flip the page orientation to landscape, add another column … and go to town.
I absolutely love the way Zappo’s reminds their employees about corporate guidelines.
Sensible rule
First of all, they have a sensible rule: don’t reply to all! This is one of those Obviously Good Ideas™ that few follow … mostly for the purposes of CingYA in case of disaster, and appearing to look busy to lots of people. But in a high-trust and high-effectiveness work environment, the best email approach is only to reply to the people who absolutely need the reply.
The others, of course, need to trust that those who need to act are in fact acting on whatever information the email contained. The benefit is that they don’t have their inbox clogged with nice-to-know but useless information, and their productivity goes up.
Creative, fun implementation
However, most companies (even the ones with good rules) have nasty or annoying ways of reminding employees about the do’s and don’ts. Memos, personal chats with managers, staff meetings, etc. All of them are boring, annoying, can be insulting, and … ineffective. They’re ineffective because they’re not memorable.
Well, how’s this for memorability:
I tell you – I’d remember it. I’d probably not Reply to All ever again. Others in the office probably wouldn’t either. And, because of the fun spirit … I wouldn’t even be annoyed or insulted.
You have to have an amazing corporate culture to have earned the right to do this sort of thing, though … and especially to post it on YouTube.
But when you do … the benefits obviously spill out and support your entire branding and marketing efforts.
There are good reasons for some start-ups to run in stealth mode for months or years of their early existence.
I was reminded of a few as I was reading Chris Maxcer’s review of Joost for the iPhone. Check out this gem, about the desktop version:
I had briefly used Joost’s client-side Mac video viewing application in its early days, back when Joost had very little content … then forgot about it.
The dilemma is harsh: you want to launch as early as possible to:
But the problem is obvious: launching too soon can blow your buzz as users eat your dogfood and throw up … never to arrive at your dinner table again.
That’s exactly what happened to Chris. In this case, however, Joost is lucky enough (and, frankly, has enough market momentum) to warrant a second look – occasioned by the release of their app on a new platform: the iPhone.
The question is: have they learned their lesson? Apparently not, as Maxcer reports:
The 1,813 reviews on the Apple App Store seem to agree with me: Joost has lots of promise but it fails miserably. The average rating is two stars. Many users, though, noted that they were basically waiting for a non-buggy updated version from Joost.
It’s been a little more than 2 months in the new job, so it’s about time that I’ve got the new business cards. Here’s a sample … with a holiday twist.
Do you remember vStores?
Perhaps 7 years ago that was something I tried out: hosted and completely outsourced eCommerce. I made a couple hundred dollars, and then the vStores thing went down the tubes. Last time I checked, they were still not able to get their act straight.
So it was more than a little interesting to me to get a ping from ReviewMe to review the new Pepperjam Store Builder.
This is exactly the type of thing that I’ve been looking for, off and on, for some years: a very simple way to create an online store. PepperJam sources the products, provides the technology, and handles the eCommerce. You just have to select your business focus, promote your site, and collect the cash.
Here’s the thing that particularly interests me: PepperJam allows you to host the store on your own domain … not just a virtual domain at pepperjam.com. That’s how vStores worked, and it was annoying to not be able to host your own store at your own domain.
I agreed to do the review for ReviewMe (I only review things that I’m interested in and think might be interesting to readers of Sparkplug9) and I’ve checked out the service, but haven’t been able to use it. I signed up, as I’d like to be able to actually use and implement it before reviewing, but there’s a 48-hour period in which they check potential users’ bona fides. I suppose that’s a good thing, and is going to help keep Pepperjam’s affiliates clean and above-board.
Here’s a view of their store builder:
I look forward to getting approved, in which case I’ll post more info about Pepperjam’s e-commerce solution.
Matt Rissel interviewed 100 highly successful people, trying to find the tools they used to make themselves successful. Only problem? There wasn’t any tool commonality.
However, there was a principle commonality. Here are the top 10 common principles that highly successful people share. They tend to …
Scoble interviewed Rissel on FastCompany.tv – take a look:
Michael Port sent me a manuscript of his latest book, Beyond Booked Solid a couple of months ago. It’s the follow-up book to Book Yourself Solid.
In spite of all good intentions, it sat on at table in my office for two months. I’ve just now started to crack it open and check it out. I have to say, I like it.
More as I get farther into the book …
Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology and social media.
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