June 3rd, 2010
Is Twitter useless for building followers?
It actually offends me how difficult it is to build a Twitter audience by using Twitter. Ridiculous.
Here’s a great example from this morning. I found an amazing quote from a Bruce Lee book on Reddit and tweeted it out. Here it is so you can see how fucking awesome it is.
Bruce had me up to three miles a day, really at a good pace. We’d run three miles in twenty-one or twenty-two minutes. Just under eight minutes a mile. [...] So this morning he said to me “We’re going to do five.” I said, “Bruce, I’m a helluva lot older than you are, and I can’t do five.” He said, “When we get to three, we’ll shift gears and it’s only two more and you’ll do it.” I said “Okay, hell, I’ll go for it.” So we get to three, we go into the fourth mile and I’m okay for three or four minutes, and then I really begin to give out. I’m tired, my heart’s pounding, I can’t go on any more and so I say to him, “Bruce if I run any more,” –and we’re still running– “if I run any more I’m liable to have a heart attack and die.” He said, “Then die.” It made me so mad that I went the full five miles. Afterward I went to the shower and then I wanted to talk to him about it. I said, you know, “Why did you do that?” He said, “Because you might as well be dead. Seriously, if you always put limits on what you can do, physically or anything else, it’ll spread over into the rest of your life. It’ll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.
Great quote right? I thought so, and so did Twitter. It got retweeted a bunch of times, and then RT’ed again by their followers, etc. Someone even said they printed it and pinned it to their wall. Good for them. But is anyone new following me as a result? Nope.
For me, the most effective way to get followed on Twitter is actually not to be on Twitter at all, but instead to be somewhere in person (conference etc.) and show your Twitter handle onscreen. Shoemoney recently told a story about this and how effective it is, which is worth reading. But the point is that if you point your audience from Twitter to a blog, they might subscribe, and from a blog, they might follow you on Twitter. But getting RT’ed is doesn’t build audience if it doesn’t go to your content.
This has a lot to do with incentive. I love quotes like these and finding them is awesome, but if I have no incentive to send it to my audience, then I’ll lose the will to do so. If I lose the will to do so, so will many others, which empoverishes the medium as a whole.
It follows that the reason blogs flourished is partially because of attribution and citation. The hyperlink says “follow this to go somewhere that’s really cool,” but the medium of the tweet is too ephemeral to even cause someone to do a simple follow unless they put considerable work into it– at which point you’ve put a ton of work into a platform you don’t even own, and can’t create link equity from. And let’s not forget the devaluation of the follow itself, and the fact that a follow 4 years ago was worth something, whereas most people currently do not even look at their own timeline (ask any power user about this, it’s true).
The reason this is important is because the web’s value is in its distribution of the power structure, and that you can build a powerful channel with much less cost than you previously ever could. So it only follows (heh) that the smart thing to do is send people from Twitter to your own content, at which point they go through the sales funnel (or subscription funnel, whatever), where they can turn into someone that actually pays attention. (Twitter’s design is actually interesting because it actualy encourages this jumping, incentivizing the reader but devaluing the publisher’s content.)
A lot of people in this space work with the idea that they should be on whatever platform is most popular, but that’s actually pretty stupid. The real value is in whichever platform gives you the most credibility and leverage. For some people, that’s Twitter, but for many others, it may not be… they need somewhere to send their audiences.
Is Twitter actually working for you?If so, I’d like to hear how.
Filed by Julien at 2:35 pm under strategy
35 Comments
May 17th, 2010
How To Save Newspapers
Just a quick thought.
Bloggers receive commission via affiliate links if they choose to. They are influencing a sale. They are salespeople. Companies see value in that, so they gladly pay that percentage.
Newspapers influence people too, so why don’t they receive a commission? If they influence someone in selling an iPad, why shouldn’t the newspaper get paid?
You might answer that it would result in undue influence to the journalist in question. Not so.
A journalist could write what he wants as usual, and another department (advertising, etc.) could insert affiliate links after the fact. As long as we keep the divide between departments, the reporting remains pure. No problem.
Newspaper websites already receive a ton of traffic. Any newspaper that decides to do this on their website makes a extra cool million a year, easy.
Filed by Julien at 6:56 pm under business, strategy 9 Comments
April 27th, 2010
Why We Climb Mountains
Have you ever noticed in movies that monasteries, secret martial arts dojos, and other places of secret knowledge are always high up in the mountains?
Right now I’m thinking specifically of Batman Begins, Kill Bill II, Lord of the Rings, and pretty much every movie ever where a character needs to develop skills (usually with a montage) in order to achieve their goal.
It always happens on a mountain. Why?
Climbing a mountain is a trial that petitioners must go through. They need to be deemed worthy, and one of the ways they’re tested is by being able to get there in the first place. Notice that when the hero arrives at the dojo, he’s always near death, frozen, or whatever– it’s because that’s what it takes to get there.
The mountain is a metaphor for any challenge, but still, people assume that successes come easy. They don’t. The evidence is in the very fabric of stories we tell, back all the way through every story ever told.
If success were easy, we would see the dojo in the hero’s backyard, not on the mountain. And he would just walk back there and be like “Wassup. Train me.”
Would that movie suck? Yes. Would it be valuable if it were easy?
No. It would not.
Filed by Julien at 12:24 pm under challenge, strategy 10 Comments
April 26th, 2010
Subverting Social Roles
Next time I’m on a plane with a child yelling behind me, I’m just going to start yelling too.
Whenever this kind of thing happens I’m always thinking “Hey kid, you’ll have plenty of time to complain as an adult. Right now, this is quiet time. So shush.”
Thing is, we all have social roles. I can’t start yelling in a plane because I’ll get kicked off it, but the child can yell all he wants, because expectations and our roles are different. Any treatment you receive is based on what people see and hear from authorities. The visible matters to them. The rest does not.
Two things become interesting here.
ONE>>> You need a strong social role to be taken seriously. A big part of social engineering involves taking on false authority in order to bypass security measures. If you want to get in the back door and out the side the way the best do in the internet age, you need to do it the same way.
Those that learn to do it go up the ladder fast, because they are doing a form of simplifying complex business models that is based on doing what’s needed to find results, instead of going through the usual bureaucratic maze.
TWO>>> The message must come from a social role they respect. I read a lot about anarchism but the street punks asking for change won’t listen to me because I don’t look like them. If they see my tattoos it might be different. Same with any person– the role must be congruent with what they feel themselves to be or the message isn’t heard.
I don’t think any of this will help me yell in an airplane, but certain parts of it might ensure I don’t get put on any blacklists.
What tricks do you have to subvert this kind of behaviour? Teach me something.
Filed by Julien at 10:19 am under social hacks, strategy 3 Comments
April 20th, 2010
Are you showing up TOO often?
Wow. This is a fascinating study.
I’ve always found it pretty interesting that the interest we have on our CEOs being on Twitter is largely based on them being previously unavailable. That ambiguity, that “what are they really like” feeling that leads to them becoming quasi-celebrities, is a big part of what draws people in. Same with celebrities; no matter how cool he really is, the more you know Ashton Kutchener, the more normal he is.
Basically, if we knew them, we wouldn’t care. The more you can get of someone, the more normal they seem. This much is obvious.
Here is where the study comes in. Apparently being too available makes you boring, but making yourself only a little accessible makes you interesting. It’s a fine line to draw. What can we learn from it?
Hugh McGuire said: “Don’t blog to be known– blog to be knowable.” So we should learn to express ourselves, particularly our quirks but also what makes us similar to others, in order to be seen as “like them” but interesting and funny enough to be different.
But something happens when people cross that line.
You can experience this yourself if you like by replicating something that happened to me a few years ago while watching a Tony Robbins talk. I didn’t know a lot about the guy when I watched his TED video, but I remember thinking “Wow! This is a smart guy.” So I went looking around a bit.
Go ahead and watch the video now, and then keep reading.
Way later, I was surfing through Charlie Rose videos and came across an interview with him again. I watched it, and my feelings were transformed.
What does this mean? Well, first, I think it’s pretty clear that Robbins scripts pretty much everything– either that or he’s so practiced at it that it just rolls out.
But the fact that the story was told the exact same way means that my feelings changed a lot… and I somehow grew to respect him less. I now felt like it was theater, and slightly cheated.
Interesting, isn’t it?
This blog post has nothing to do with Tony Robbins specifically; I still have a ton of respect for where he’s gotten and how he got there. But it does have to do with how we feel about someone the more we get to know them.
Look, no one is funny all the time. No one has that many good jokes. So maybe that scarcity is a good thing– creating a good impression, but only often enough to be remembered.
Then again, I could be totally off. Am I?
Filed by Julien at 8:52 pm under strategy 8 Comments
April 14th, 2010
Act on the Inevitable Today
Free was a great book. But I don’t think it went far enough.
The premise of Chris Anderson’s book was awesome: When something gets too cheap to meter, it will inevitably become free, so you should act as if it is free. Since every abundance causes another scarcity, you will be able to make money in a new way, revolutionize your industry, etc. etc. Read the book if you want to find out more. (It comes out on paperback next week. Notice the new subtitle.)
Here’s the thing though. Free isn’t the only inevitability.
Look in every business and you’ll find them: The end of oil, the aging of the population, universal access to the web, objects tweeting, etc. All of these things are inevitable, and when they happen, there will be a radical change in the way businesses work with them.
In your business, you must find out what the inevitable is and act on it today. Place your outpost there when there’s no competition, because you’ll want it when it becomes obvious to everyone in your industry.
This is the equivalent of your cool friend knowing about every hot band before you. He’s lower on the filter ladder than you, so he profits more when one of his choices hits gold. The difference is, your friend just looks avant-garde when his pick is right. With your business, it’s profit that’s on the line. :)
So in a way, acting on the inevitable is like picking horses in a race or buying land. You’re betting that things will go in a certain direction in the future. But inevitabily in an industry is usually much more obvious, and easier to hit for upstarts than big companies.
The question is how you become a foursquare instead of a Brightkite. Being there early clearly isn’t everything.
What else matters? I’m trying to figure it out.
Filed by Julien at 9:40 am under strategy 3 Comments
March 30th, 2010
The Human Element
Why is the human element important? Why should your business care?
You can compete with price. You can compete with design. You can compete with reliability. So why would you want to compete on the human front? Why is it important that you win this particular war?
Feeling cannot be given a price tag, so the human element is the only business strategy that is not subject to commodification and price war. It makes people feel good to be appreciated, it cannot be scaled (which means money can’t buy it), and once your customers are getting it, it’s something your customers don’t want to lose.
This means that intimacy allows smaller businesses to compete with larger ones by acting in ways larger organizations cannot. It cannot be competed against directly, the same way friends can’t “compete” against each other for your affection. The game becomes “with,” not “instead of.”
You have to focus where you can win. McDonald’s makes a burger faster than your local joint, and it’s more consistent– and some people want that. But for those that want an experience and a feeling of coming somewhere special, no McDonald’s or Starbucks will do, nor will any contrived substitute.
So offer them what they really want. Make your staff genuinely charming. Make them do something special for people who are regulars, not just “loyalty programs.” And a special kind of person will, in fact, come.
Filed by Julien at 7:27 am under strategy 4 Comments
March 8th, 2010
Introducing PO
Happy Monday. :)
I would like to use today’s blog post to introduce you to a thinking tool created by Edward de Bono– the word PO. Here is the basic idea (here’s a great book review if you need more):
NO is a tool of logic. You use it to refute and prove things false and to clarify murky subjects.
YES is a tool of belief. You use it when you’re looking to confirm something.
The problem with YES and NO as the only two options is that they present a closed worldview in which every discussion leads to either confirmation or denial of a supposition/hypothesis. A conversation around “is this a good idea” tends to lead to either a YES or NO conclusion.
So far I’m sure you’re with me. Now here’s a third one that we’ll introduce for usage on this blog (and in your life):
PO is a tool of creativity.
PO is neither YES nor NO. Think of PO as being a combination between “consider this,” “what if?” and “let’s follow this train of thought, even though it might make no sense.” We can also combine two different things that might normally not go together at all, then use PO to force us to combine the two in a creative way. This leads to new kinds of thinking and, over time, to a general attitude of openness to new stuff. And openness is the key to success.
Basically, the point of this word tool is to expand discussion, to remind us to stay open, and to lead us to new possibilities to understand or create the future. A new word forces us into that mode when we hear it. It’s shorthand for an open, creative “what if.”
All I wanted to do was introduce this today, but I’d also like to give you guys an example that shows both how to use PO and that you can use as an exercise (leave your response to the PO in the comments below).
PO: In the future, everything can send out status messages (like people do with Twitter now). All social objects/metadata are status messages, including location, mood, “busy-ness” level, “on/off-ness” of objects, and more. For example, the oven sends you a status message when it is left on.
Where does this lead?
Filed by Julien at 2:11 pm under challenge, strategy 2 Comments
February 24th, 2010
Reminder: Risk = Reward
If you are afraid of the new, then you are afraid of success.
Seems obvious to us that we can’t follow the career path our parents did, right? We feel so smart when we say that it’s soooo evident, people change careers all the time, you can’t have one employer your whole life, etc. etc. Everythone thinks they’re a total genius when they say this.
The principle behind the statement is true. We just won’t profit using old models. However, we don’t seem to understand how much we rely on old models ourselves.
We still believe in:
- Rising to the top via the usual corporate ladder.
- Becoming self-employed using the same BS methods everyone else uses.
- Following the same relationship ladder as everyone else.
- Taking the popular trips everybody else takes.
Some of these things still work ok, and others don’t. But allow me to make this as plain as I can for you:
The paths in your head are your enemy.
They are paths because they have been taken before by other people, and because they were taken, they are no longer profitable. Someone else found that route. They picked up the pot of gold at the end of that rainbow before you did, and it’s gone now. Get it?
The Tragedy of the Commons means that everything that’s done before is not as good as it once was.
Someone else had that experience you wanted, and you didn’t. It was great then, and now it sucks. Guess what? That’s how things go. That is why I talk about scars.
Some people want you to believe that it’s easy, but it isn’t.
You’ll have to suffer.
You’ll have to break your own programming again and again.
You’ll have to fight everything in your past with every ounce of your being in order to become someone new.
Risk = Reward. There is no other way.
Filed by Julien at 2:00 pm under strategy 8 Comments
February 9th, 2010
What is Checkout Aisle Syndrome?
I’m starting to like these little thought experiments.
The other day I talked about luck and acting as if it wasn’t there at all, behaving as if there was no such thing. Let’s see what happens when we do the opposite of this– in other words, if we considered ourselves lucky, how would we behave? (Like Hurley from Lost, maybe.)
Belief in luck (and having it) leads to what I like to call “checkout aisle syndrome.” This is what happens when we start to believe that incredible, out of the ordinary events will just happen to us as we go ahead and behave the way we always have. It’s named after the idea that people think they will be “discovered” by someone in power at the checkout aisle, usually accompanied by the phrase “ZOMG!!! You are the one I’ve been looking for!!!”
In other words, they believe in a prince charming that will sweep them off their feet (career-wise or personally) so that they don’t have to do anything. It’s a belief in destiny that isn’t accompanied by any need to change any of their behaviour.
Of course, people that believe that this will happen to them (they’re more common than you think) also believe that they are special– otherwise this unlikely event that will happen to them would also happen to any number of other people. Since it doesn’t, they must be different.
I loved Nassim Nicholas Taleb‘s answer to this– place ourselves in as many “lucky” instances as possible by accepting any party invitation we could (instead of staying home, say) just because the likelihood of meeting a future business or romantic partner is much more likely than if you’re sitting there microwaving Michelina’s. That said, a basic set of skills to find opportunity should still be cultivated.
Are you still waiting? I know I do it sometimes. Usually this happens in some parts of your life, but not in others. What do you think?
Filed by Julien at 1:27 pm under strategy 5 Comments
