Recently I went to the Connect Now conference and had the chance to hug Darren Rowse, meet Gary Vaynerchuk and hang out with my social media friends. One year ago, I didn’t think I’d be able to accomplish something so awesome.
Skellie was one of the people that made this possible. She wrote this killer book, The Blog Business Funnel (aff), which presented a new model of making an income from your blog.
Skellie argues that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to monetize a blog via traditional methods such as direct advertising, affiliate sales and adsense. She highlights a system which shows bloggers how they can make plenty of money doing what they’re best at.
She recommends “using word-of-mouth worthy content to generate targeted traffic, then using your knowledge and insight to generate trust.”
I’ve struggled with the idea of launching a business from my blog for years. I’ve had lots of issues and was flailing around, trying to find a model that aligned with my business goals and my promotional ethic.
I had read a lot of business products about how to build a profitable business but they were separated into different niches: sales, blogging and freelancing. I was getting the information I needed but I had no way to fit it all together.
Skellie took us through key launch strategies and details how we could apply them to our own business. I’m heavily into product launches yet it never occurred to me that it could apply for services. We are in the prelaunch stages and already have huge demand. We have several larger companies willing to send smaller jobs our way as well.
I knew that my business would be successful because I had an established blog and had worked hard to create trust with my audience. What I didn’t expect was for it to be doing this well less than a month after the launch.
I’ve struggled with the concept of promoting myself. It’s hard. I wanted to get the word out there but didn’t want to seem sleazy or that I was trying to take advantage of my friends.
I was able to learn how to sell myself and my business by just doing what I was already doing. Hanging out online, being darn useful and creating high quality content. She taught me how I could leverage that interest in a way that benefited everyone.
I was fortunate enough to catch up with Skellie in Melbourne. She is the real deal. This is the model she used to rock it online and leverage that success to get employed by Envato. I watched her grow from a compelling blogger to someone that commanded respect in the industry. Everything she writes is from personal experience – experience that most bloggers don’t have.
Now, I love Skellie. She is one of the few bloggers I get totally fan girl over. I was worried that this would affect my objectivity so asked a friend for his opinion.
Frank Wall is a hiking blogger. His site is primarily monetized via advertising and ebook sales. He didn’t get as much out of the ebook as I did. He was intrigued by the idea and really enjoyed Skellies writing but it didn’t fit with his method of monetization.
I agree. Skellies book was perfect for me because I know I wanted to create a freelance business based off the success of my blog but had no idea how to accomplish this. I spend six months kicking arse with my guest pots and let my blog stagnate because I didn’t know how to handle the demand for my services.
There is one blogger that I credit for igniting my passion in this industry. She showed me that you could write beautifully, no matter the topic. She revolutionized the industry for me and I’ve used her as inspiration. This blogger is Skellie.
I review a lot of products. This is the best value ebook I’ve seen in a year. Learn more about it here (aff).
Jade’s Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this product in exchange for my feedback, and get no affiliate commission.
Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.
How To Turn Your Blog Into A Profitable Business
Live Blogging Hits a New High With Apple’s WWDC http://bit.ly/aRUO0E
[Direct Link]RT @BlazingMinds: Classic @BlazingMinds: WordPress Plugin Video Tutorial http://bit.ly/aSm5qc #blogging #bloggerluv
[Direct Link]Weekly Wrap-up: Zuckerberg's Half-Truths, Firefox Loosing to Chrome, Twitter Ads, And More... http://bit.ly/aK7JWT
What a massive week for Facebook news, eh? What you, dear reader, loved most about our coverage was when Marshall Kirkpatrick stood up and called out CEO Mark Zuckerberg on his half-truths regarding the new privacy policies. We also continued our exploration of the significant Internet trends of 2010: We looked at how books are now a part of the Internet of Things; how you can create code-free augmented reality in less than five minutes; and how the real-time Web affected the Gulf oil disaster. Read on for more.
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Early squid:
New Canadian research into 500 million-year-old carnivore fossils has revealed an early ancestor of modern-day squids and octopuses, solving the mystery surrounding a previously unclassifiable creature."This is significant because it means that primitive cephalopods were around much earlier than we thought, and offers a reinterpretation of the long-held origins of this important group of marine animals," Martin Smith, University of Toronto and Royal Ontario Museum paleontology PhD student, said in a release.
More:
This was one of those confusing, uninterpretable Cambrian animals, represented by only one poorly preserved specimen. Now, 91 new specimens have been dug up and interpreted, and it makes sense to call it a cephalopod. It has two camera eyes—not arthropod-like compound eyes—on stalks, an axial cavity containing paired gills like the mantles of modern cephalopods, and a flexible siphon opening into that cavity. There are also subtle similarities in the structure of the connective tissue in the lateral fins. Obviously, it has a pair of tentacles; no mouthparts have been preserved, but there are hints in the form of dark deposits between the tentacles, which may be all that's left of the mouthparts - and are in the right place for a cephalopod ancestor.
Also, this, this, and this. And the paper from Nature.
WordPress fans take note: it looks like we now have an iPhone app that may remove the pain from blogging upon our iDevices without resorting to “the way of the geek.”
BlogBooster has released an iPhone app that allows you to not only insert multiple images, but also includes a formatting bar allowing you to italicize, embolden, underline as well as strike through text without having to manually type in the coding. You can also manually insert hyperlinks as well (another plus!).
Although the app seems geared towards WP fans, BlogBooster also supports Blogger, Typepad and Tumblr, with more platforms on the way (not to mention an upcoming iPad app!).
Priced at $4.99 USD, some may wonder if the app is worth it, especially when their are less expensive rivals like BlogPress (not to mention free official alternatives for WordPress, Typepad and Tumblr).
So before you hit the buy button, here is an in depth review highlighting the good, the bad and the awesome regarding this new blogging app.
Currently BlogBooster is the only multiblogging app with a formatting bar. While the app is not the first to introduce this feature (as the LiveJournal.app launched a similar feature in 2008), BlogBooster is the first that I recall that allows you to format the color and size of the font (the former which will appeal to artistic bloggers).
You can also insert multiple images (as highlighted above), but BlogBooster goes one step further by allowing you to find images suitable for your post using their “Autocontent” feature.
Autocontent also allows you to locate blogs and news media discussing similar topics, and will allow you to insert a hyperlink from them automatically within the post.
BlogBooster also allows you to preview your post within your iPhone app, which will let bloggers know how their formatted posts will appear upon their blog.
You can also choose whether or not you want to save a draft on your iPhone or on your server (which means you can edit the post later on via the notebook).
For those of you who are fanatical about their image sizes, you can not only adjust the image size, but align them to the right, left or center of your post.
BlogBooster also supports tags, so BlogSpot fans and Tumblr freaks will be able to categorize their posts, although the app currently lacks categories (which will probably not please WordPress guru’s or Typepad addicts).
While I am glad that BlogBooster launched with a formatting bar, users may find formatting text near the top of the screen to be frustrating (as the “Select All” bubble will block the bar at times). They may want to consider moving it down near the bottom of the screen.
Also inserting images was not as smooth as its rivals, as the app would constantly favor inserting the images below the text, and not where you last tapped.
Speaking of images, I noticed that BlogBooster does not support uploading images upon the server (it supports Picasa Web only), a feature that will probably only appeal to BlogSpot fans.
While BlogBooster does highlight on their website that the app supports video, the app in its current form lacks video uploading capabilities, and only supports uploading images (so video bloggers are out of luck here).
Last but not least geo-location was surprisingly missing from this app, which is surprising as all of the official apps have this, not to mention a few of its rivals as well.
If you are a Typepad fan or a BlogSpot lover then this app will appeal to you, especially if you are heavy into formatting your posts (as well as loathe all things video).
This app will probably not appeal to Tumblr addicts (as it lacks a tumble-stream) while WordPress fans may want to hold out until the WP Masters unveil their upcoming iPhone app (which is rumored to include video support) before hitting the buy button.
If BlogBooster is able to find a way to support video uploading (perhaps via YouTube like BlogPress?) as well as images upon each platforms respective servers, I could easily see this as the blogging app for the iPhone worth $10 (let alone $5).
Sharing: Social Media Strategy from A to Z http://bit.ly/czWCcv
Social media might be old. It might even be a dead buzzword. That’s why you need to paint a picture that’s more meaningful and encompasses what “social media” as a label really is.
Some of us have been thrust into social media simply because the online landscape showed potential for online conversations. Others have been there for over a decade. Regardless of the many years of experience you have in the online space, the ideas behind social media and social media marketing are applicable to everyone. Let’s take a look at some lessons, takeaways, and tips.
Always be Listening. Social media rocks because it’s one of the most amazing tools for “free” market research. Your investment is merely that of time. Take the time to hear what people are saying about your business. If you’re the frugal type, take advantage of the free alerts from Google, YackTrack, Social Mention, BackType (which gives you alerts from blog/article comments, which other services do not include), and Trackur.
Blogging. Who said that blogging was dead? Perhaps 140 character streams have replaced regular blogging, but I’ve been blogging more than ever lately. Blogging helps you build community (especially via comments), establish thought leadership, bring links to your website (both internally, perhaps to products or to other articles on your blog, and externally, when people like what you say and opt to link to you), and get you some nice traffic. If you can blog, you should. And read these tips on how to become a great blogger.
Customer Service. The letter “C” could be a lot of things, like “content,” “consistency,” and “community,” but customer service is a big part of the evolution of social media. This shift is becoming increasingly more obvious. The role of customer service online is becoming equivalent to social media marketing. If you use the online space to offer customer service, you are essentially marketing yourself. Showing a public interest in your customers and genuinely offering help helps nurture a positive perception of your brand.
Drive Leads through LinkedIn. Lead generation and client acquisition can be had on LinkedIn, especially in the B2B space, just as long as you’re active and engaging. Linkedin lead generation requires commitment to answering and asking questions on Groups/Answers, taking advantage of the deep searches, and connecting directly with those around you in your network. Effective use means more business.
Engagement. It’s not enough to broadcast. “Look at this! Twitter! Let me port my RSS feed to it and be done with it!” Nope, that’s the wrong approach. Engagement requires regular interaction between you and others. These are conversations, not broadcasts. You may not want to do it super frequently, but you should do it everyday. Be responsive. Offer value. Give to your community.
Friendships. Thought I was going to say “Facebook?” Sorry. The best types of social media marketing arise from genuine concern as if your customers are true friends. How many of you have made true friends from merely engaging in this space? Exactly. There’s so much to gain from being networked, and you’ll find that there’s a real reward in finding out that these relationships turn into something much more.
Goals. You shouldn’t jump into social media just because “everyone else is doing it.” There’s a lot of potential, of course, and it looks mighty appealing, but setting goals is advisable as well. You might want to consider the SMART formula for specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely goals. Whatever goal methodology you adopt, don’t jump into social media without having something you want to gain from it.
Human Business. Social media marketing is what you might call “human business.” I often use explain it as follows: “social media marketing is all about ‘leveraging’ the social through its media to market to your constituents.” “Leverage” may sound a tad too exploitative, because the idea is to build genuine relationships that put the customers first before promoting your own agenda. As such, it’s important never to lose sight of the “human” in the business. Social media marketing recognizes the fact that this online space allows millions of people to congregate and to communicate with one another, and it’s not much different than sitting in a real room talking to real people. Never lose sight that the online space is a human medium.
Influence. Social media gives you an opportunity to exert influence onto customers and prospects. If you’re active in any particular medium, you become influential. That influence often translates to interest; people want to hear what you have to say. Here are tips on becoming an influential blogger.
Kirtsy and Other Niche Social Networks. Did you know there’s a social news website catered to women called Kirtsy? There is. For any interest in the world, there’s an online community for it. You just need to look. Kirtsy is a social news network; there are also forums and even Yahoo! Groups. It’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with these communities and not to focus merely on the big players. Your target market might be hiding in a niche forum somewhere out there. Start digging and maybe you’ll reap some serious rewards.
Location. People always ask me what the “future” of social media is. I think that where we are will continue to evolve, but we’re seeing that face-to-face connections have a role in social media marketing as well. FourSquare, Gowalla, Loopt, and other location-aware services are social networks, unifying real connections. Beyond that, though, there’s the potential for businesses to run with special promotions, bringing more people to a business location and maybe even cultivating new friendships as well.
Marketing Beyond the Social. This is a blog post intended to address social media strategy, but social media marketing is not a panacea. It alone is not the only marketing solution. There’s display advertising, print/TV ads, SEO, PPC, email marketing, snail mail, etc etc. Focusing solely on social media might be nice, but your marketing reach should be a little more extensive than focusing on Twitter and Facebook. That said, marketing beyond the standard mediums (see letter K) should also be a given. I’m going to bet that 99% of you have not tapped into some the most powerful online communities that can serve you or your own clients.
Nurture Perception. Sure, people don’t want to lose control of the conversation. That’s one of the biggest reasons for companies not to engage in social media at all. They like dictating and broadcasting, and they’re afraid of a two-way conversation and the potential negative impacts of engaging. They’re especially worried when people are already saying negative things about them. That’s where you as a business, one that genuinely cares about building true relationships, can shine. You may not be able to change perceptions overnight, but you can certainly nurture those perceptions and give customers reasons to give you a chance in the future.
Opt-in, not out. Using social media is a privilege, but someone friending you on a social network doesn’t mean they agree to receive unsolicited messaging. This explicitly references the LinkedIn or Facebook connections that give you access to a person’s precious “commodity,” his email address. Just because you have access to it doesn’t mean he wants your newsletter. A relationship is not a newsletter opt-in, and quite frankly, it’s spammy. If I give you my phone number at a dinner party, it’s probably because I want to know about you, but I’m not inviting you to start hounding me with sales calls. Don’t opt someone into communications just because they’re your newest LinkedIn contact. Do it because they want to be a subscriber and explicitly opted in first.
Participation is Marketing. This term was coined by Chris Heuer five years ago and still rings true. The idea is that when businesses participate in social media (and do so because they want to actually be members, not marketers), their sheer presence and activity on the service translates to marketing. What does that mean for you? By engaging, being yourself, being altruistic (and coming bearing gifts, looking to offer value and not to receive), you’ll gain some followers and fans, and maybe even customers.
Queen. That’s what marketing is, according to Gary Vaynerchuk. Content is king, but marketing is the queen, he said. (I even have the shirt.) Content alone is not enough. Blogging is wonderful, but if you’re not going to market those blog posts, you might as well not be blogging at all. With billions of pages of content and yottabytes of data, marketing is how you’ll get people to see what you have to offer to the world.
Reputation Management. If you’ve seen a negative search result for your business name, social media marketing might be able to help. By creating social media profiles, updating content regularly, and actively participating on social media networks, you may be able to successfully push down those negative mentions of your business name.
Simplifying with Tools. One of my favorite things about social media marketing is simply the many tools that make your life so much easier. Tools that especially help consolidate the actions across social networks in one single location are quite helpful. Social media doesn’t have to be a challenge thanks to tools that help you track measurement, assess the reach of campaigns, give you updates when someone talks about you, and more. I’ll go into some tools in future posts (and we’ve seen some great listening tools under the letter A), but it becomes obvious that those of us involved in the social media space are quite fortunate; our jobs are made much easier thanks to so many software applications out there. Of course, never forget that this is human business, and the tools aren’t supposed to replace relationships.
Time. Want to be an “overnight success?” Sorry, that’s not something you can do in social media marketing. Sure, you can have viral campaigns that truly rock, but at the end of the day, it’s all a substantial time investment. I’ve said it before; social media is not a silver bullet. While some campaigns are formulated to broadcast and promote on social channels quickly, true social media marketing relates to building relationships with customers and constituents. That takes time. It won’t happen overnight and you shouldn’t expect it to happen in one month’s time either. If you’re in it to win it, you better be doing it for the long haul.
Understanding Your Community. Three years ago, I wrote that owning your community requires understanding of who they are. People love the prospect of submitting to Digg, for example, and some immediately submit the spammiest articles to the service. I’ve seen press releases, non-English releases, and everything else in between. Before you jump in, you need to actually observe and understand the culture on these services. Learn the rules, the language, and the things that make them tick. You can’t succeed in social media without understanding the community.
Value. Your success as a blogger and promoter really comes from offering value to your audience. It’s not about regurgitating content through twitterfeed, and it’s not about summarizing a post from Mashable without giving additional insights. Value-add comes from injecting your own thoughts, opinions, and feelings. It’s about giving someone else an education and/or leaving them with something to think about.
Word of mouth marketing. Social media is a big part of word of mouth marketing. After all, you’re using social media to talk, but hopefully you’re also working harder to get people to talk about you. People listen to their friends’ recommendations. In fact, are you surprised that Google now takes advantage of this in the form of social search?
Xperiment. Okay, that’s not a word. But experimenting is critical for success. You won’t know until you try. You can always run with some tests, get some feedback, and see if you can run with it full scale. Use the feedback others give you to improve or to go ahead with it. And don’t be afraid if you fail. Just consider that an opportunity to grow and do better the next time around. If you as a newcomer to the space see social media marketing as an experimental pilot program and use any feedback you receive as input for tweaks, you’ll consistently see improvements.
YouTube. YouTube now has 2 billion views per day. It’d be silly to ignore YouTube as a potential medium for marketing your business. It would also be silly to limit distribution of video by preventing them from being embedded onto other websites. That’s how the message spreads. If you’re considering video, do something creative; look for the traits of the most successful videos and do it better. And of course, don’t only focus on YouTube; there are other video syndication sites that you can spread your message to.
Zealous. Let’s put it this way: the most successful social media marketers are both passionate about what they represent and the act of marketing. They don’t shy away from putting their best foot forward — they know that the fact that your favorite search engine does not forget means you need to be on your best behavior always. This doesn’t get to them; they’re still offering service with a smile.
Sure, this only scratches the surface of social media marketing, and there are only 26 takeaways, but hopefully these tips, tricks, and tools will be able to get you thinking. What other social media ideas would you add to the list?
Photos by Shutterstock..
[ Social Media Strategy from A to Z is a post written by Tamar Weinberg. ]
Read more about The New Community Rules: Marketing on the Social Web, a primer to social media marketing. Or you can subscribe to the Techipedia RSS feed.
Social Media Strategy from A to Z
- Rob DianaSocial Media Strategy from A to Z
- Mike Fruchter
Image via Wikipedia
Blogging is just one form of content creation and creative expression available to us all on the Web. The term blog, or weblog, has been around for twelve years. People were journaling and posting articles and other content on the Web long before that. People have been self-publishing in other media for hundreds of years.
Plenty of people have advice on the best ways to write a post, getting traffic to your blog, making money from your blog, and so on.
Some people will give you lots of advice on the topic(s) that you should focus your blog on.
It seems like we’ve got this whole blogging thing covered.
But then there’s one other little question that’s the most interesting of all…
WHY?
Why do we blog? Why do we write? Why do we spend hours upon hours slaving in front of computers? Why do we wring our brains madly on a regular basis trying to think of new and interesting things to say? Why do we get frustrated when the words won’t come?
Some people create content in order to make money directly off their blogs by selling advertising, using affiliate links to sell stuff (I do this through my book reviews but I try not to be a PITA about it), selling their own products, etc. That’s fine. It’s pretty obvious that some people are trying to make their living directly through selling stuff on their blog and that’s cool.
Then there are tons of us who aren’t focusing on direct monetization, including a huge group of people who aren’t in it for the money at all.
That is what I’m interested in learning about.
Why do we blog? More specifically, why do YOU blog?
Yes, it’s reader participation time and I’m writing this specifically for YOU. I’m being nosy today and I want to know why you do it. What are your goals, dreams, aspirations, hopes, and wishes from this powerful medium:
Many of the items in this list apply to me (although I can’t prove that I’m channeling an alien intelligence… yet…)
I’m really curious about this. I think introspection is a powerful tool and we can learn a lot by examining why we want to do things. I think we all learn from seeing these ideas in print.
Please share your thoughts in the comment section so we can all learn from this. If you write your own post about this, link back to this post and I’ll create a link back to you in this post.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=f15b6e3e-2c91-49fd-8565-d75780875c6e)
Plenty of people have advice on the best ways to write a post, getting traffic to your blog, making money from your blog, and so on. Some people will give you lots of advice on the topic(s) that you should focus your blog on. It seems like we’ve got this whole blogging thing covered. But then there’s one other little question that’s the most interesting of all…WHY?
- Mark Krynsky
RT @jsinkeywest: NeTTen Media launches in San Antonio ##blogging ##sem ##seo ##sanantonio http://bit.ly/bnavSu
[Direct Link]Blogging is the thing to do on this flight, apparently.
Have I mentioned how much I love Virgin America? Seriously, it make the other airlines look like shit. Wish the seats were bigger though.
New Blog Post: InfoSmack Podcast: Blogging On the Corporate Watch http://goo.gl/fb/6eCpN
[Direct Link]ReadWriteStart Weekly Wrapup http://bit.ly/bEFbuc
After the success of last week's ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit in Mountain View, California, we are back with this week's best startup advice in the ReadWriteStart Weekly Wrapup. This week we discuss VCs and NDAs, balancing features between power users and newbies, geeky startups and how one startup shrugged off a lack of funding and made the money themselves. We also have stories about Diaspora, the open source Facebook alternative, as well as an interview with Gary Vaynerchuk about the bright future of geolocation.
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There are several important documents you'll want to have ready when you meet with potential investors. Your mission statement. Your founding team's resume and responsibilities. A business plan.
But most investors agree: they do not want to sign an NDA.
While non-disclosure agreements are designed to protect your ideas, asking potential investors to sign an NDA is generally seen as unnecessary and unwise. Most VCs point to the following reasons for avoiding NDAs:
For many successful startups, there exists a point where their product is popular enough to grow beyond the minimum viable product, but is yet to be discovered by millions more that may be turned off if the service is too complicated. Internet startups need to find a balance between keeping the power users interested, while not overwhelming the newbies. According to Spark Capital's Bijan Sabet, Tumblr, a rapidly growing micro-blogging service, is one company doing a beautiful job of finding this balance by turning the "less is more" mantra into "less and more."
If you tell most folks that Diaspora is promising to build a distributed, open-source social network, they are apt look at you glassy-eyed. Perhaps they'll nod and say, "Oh. Cool." Tell those same people that Diaspora is promising to build an alternative to Facebook, and they're much more likely to know what you are talking about. And as of late, it's much more likely they'll nod and say, "Oh! Cool!" - and mean it.
Last week during my stint at Boulder Startup Week, Occipital co-founder Vikas Reddy was gracious enough to let me stay with him rather than in a hotel. Oddly enough it wasn't until one of the late night mixers a few days into the event that I got a chance to talk with Reddy about Occipital and the company's history and evolution. As it turns out, barcode scanning, which the company is now well known for with its RedLaser application, was not their original plan, but rather a pivot made to take the company in a more profitable direction.">
Since we broke the story about the Diaspora Project last week, the plans for an open source, distributed alternative to Facebook has seen widespread press. But just as importantly, funding for the undertaking has skyrocketed.
Last week we asked you to send us your questions for our interview with wine connoisseur and social-media expert Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary and his consulting company VaynerMedia recently ran an experiment with the NBA's New Jersey Nets and geolocation app Gowalla (in which Gary is an investor) to see if location services could draw fans to games with free tickets. For all parties involved, the experiment was deemed a success, and the findings from it have provided a unique insight into the future possibilities for geolocationtional advertising.
What if Zuck invented the web? (Scripting News). http://r2.ly/8xap
What if Zuck invented the web?
- Dave WinerRT @davewiner: What if Zuck invented the web? (Scripting News). http://r2.ly/8xap
- Robert ScobleWhat if Zuck invented the web? http://lgno.me/aZZifT [@DaveWiner]
- Chris PirilloNew Post: Facebook Finally Calls Meeting on Privacy Strategy http://ow.ly/17nc2i
Facebook has finally decided to directly address the privacy concerns of the media, it’s users, and it’s ex-users. The meeting is scheduled for 4pm today, May 13th. While Facebook has attempted to downplay the outrage from users, as it has done with previous changes in the past, this latest situation is just too much too ignore. According to sources inside the company, the meeting is to discuss and possibly change the companies privacy strategy.
Over the many redesigns, feature additions, and privacy changes that have come across just recently, Facebook has been able to pretty much ignore user complaints. While everyone would complain about the changes, nobody ever did anything about it beyond creating a Facebook group or blogging about it. Now, prominent tech figures and many previous fans have actually closed their accounts due to Facebook’s latest changes.
First, they changed the language on the site to increase engagement round fan pages and groups. This ensured users would end up associating themselves with things unintentionally. The next step was launching the Graph API and implementing Instant Personalization. This made it simple for publishers to implement a Like button on their sites and associate visitors with their content. It also made your personal info freely available to a few 3rd party sites with plans to expand that number in the future.
If this were not enough of a shake up, we then saw a security hole where any of your friends could get a glimpse of your chat history and pending friend requests. Shortly after that, we find out that Yelp, one of the chosen 3rd parties given access to your personal data via Instant Personalization, had a security hole that allowed any third party to get access to all of your Facebook data without you ever visiting Yelp or doing anything out of the ordinary. You didn’t even need to be logged into Facebook.
It’s easy to see how many users are outraged and turned off by the social networking giant. Many so much so that they’ve totally given up and deleted their accounts. One of the primary issues with the changes Facebook makes is that they are all opt-out instead of opt-in. This means you are automatically tossed into the fire and are expected to a) know what has happened and b) know how to opt-out. Most Facebook users haven’t a clue about this stuff and others even doubt if this opt-out policy is even legal.
It’s debatable whether Facebook will be able to turn this thing around or even if they are looking to do so. While they have lost a few users, they are still #1 and this may just be a play to simply cool things down a bit.
via Facebook Calls All Hands Meeting On Privacy
Balancing Act: Keeping Power Users Happy Without Overwhelming the Newbies http://bit.ly/8YCEPB
For many successful startups, there exists a point where their product is popular enough to grow beyond the minimum viable product, but is yet to be discovered by millions more that may be turned off if the service is too complicated. Internet startups need to find a balance between keeping the power users interested, while not overwhelming the newbies. According to Spark Capital's Bijan Sabet, Tumblr, a rapidly growing micro-blogging service, is one company doing a beautiful job of finding this balance by turning the "less is more" mantra into "less and more."
Sponsor
A technique that many early-stage startups use to test feature changes or price alterations involves creating a sandbox of users on which to test these changes. By rolling out new features to a small beta group, the company can analyze how the changes are working and whether they would be successful for the entire group. Tumblr is using this technique in a bit of a different way, building their sandbox around new users and removing some features that some might find confusing.
Sabet, a member of Tumblr's board, says that newer users to the service aren't as interested in features such as the Radar, the follower count and the number of "likes," so Tumblr has found a way to keep things simplified for them. After signing up, extraneous feature like these are hidden until the user adds a few posts to their Tumblr. Then, as Sabet says, the features "elegantly appear."
"I think that's brilliant and not intuitive," writes Sabet. "I love the new approach that they are taking to balance keeping things simple while adding new functionality."
Tumblr is a perfect example of the type of startup that can benefit from this kind of system. Facebook, with over 400 million users, can and does roll out site-wide changes, usually to the chagrin of a select group of users - but Facebook can handle it. Smaller startups would risk losing their entire user base if they changed things too drastically or became too bloated with features.
Tumblr is at a point where it needs to keep growing to maintain its popularity, but it doesn't want to lose the simplicity that attracts new users. By making the new user experience slightly different, they've managed to continue to acquire new users while appeasing their long-time fans with new features. Sometimes all users are not created equal, and easing people into the advanced features is a great way to make the on-boarding process as simple and as painless as possible.
If you know of any other services using a similar tactic to on-board users, lets us know about it in the comments!
Photo by Flickr user Raphael Goetter.
Discuss
Larry Ellison On Sun Ex-CEO: Blogging Was Silly Diversion. http://r2.ly/52ib
[Direct Link]RT @tycoonblogger: What is the best blogging community for bloggers? http://bit.ly/bt99Zb BAMM LOL
[Direct Link]http://tycoonblogger.com/promoting-your-blog/what-is-the-best-blogging-community-for-bloggers @tycoonblogger Cool dialogue man Thanks
- John SullivanHey everyone Blogger Luv a brand new site gets compared to the others @ http://bit.ly/a2VuT5
- John SullivanRT @points2shophelp: RT @advertisespace Buy Ads on Green Shield Intl - AdvertiseSpace http://bit.ly/bu4urm #bloggers #blogging #seo #advertise
[Direct Link]Latest blog post: Enterprise 2.0 : Pilot or experimentation? http://bit.ly/dzWRvw
My previous post, Skip the buy-in and get ’em addicted, is about using a Proof of Concept and beyond model as a fast track to your fulfilling your vision. A way to penetrate the hierarchy in an unorthodox way, and get them to "feel it" and see living proof of it’s usefulness, rather than a Powerpoint pitch, or proposal document (or as living proof of your proposal).
It’s cheeky, but you are doing them a favour at the same time, as you have living contextual proof of the viability (by going ahead and doing it yourself), as opposed to buy-in approval, strategies, time, more time, and some more time…only to not get approved.
The decision-making doesn’t have to be bottom-up, perhaps management agree with a no-cost Proof of Concept as part of the strategy, this is a win for them as they are able to experiment and fail for free, something that was not possible in the enterprise tool arena a couple of years ago. Free hosted sites like Yammer for micro-blogging, and others for blogging, wikis, bookmarking, etc…make all this possible…a move from the Albatross to the Salmon.
Experimentation
The ease of Proof of Concept using social tools is an example of Dave Snowden’s Safe-Fail concept; Clay Shirky also talks of experimentation and low cost failure. Clay talks about organisational costs getting in the way of experimenting and finding the most optimal road. Rather we except sub-standard roads based on them being less risky and more predictable…not really the agile road to innovation at all.
Clay says:
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“…most organisations attempt to reduce the effect of failure by reducing its likelihood [and cost]. Imagine that you are spearheading an effort for a firm that wants to become more innovative. You are given a list of promising but speculative ideas, and you have to choose some subset of them for investment. You thus have to guess the likelihood of success or failure for each project. The obvious problem is that no one knows for certain what will succeed and what will fail. A less obvious but potentially more significant problem is that the possible value of various projects is unconnected to anything their designers say about them…in these circumstances, you will inevitably green-light failures and pass on potential successes. Worse still, more people will remember you saying yes to a failure than saying no to a radical but promising idea. Given this asymmetry, you will be pushed to make safe choices, thus systematically undermining the rationale for trying to be more innovative in the first place” |
But now with social tools you can experiment many options, which in the end is less risky as you are doing what you propose but at a low cost, if not free. What more would a manager want…they don’t have to predict the worthiness, they can see it and taste it. In economics this is collapsing the "opportunity cost".
The other important point is "emergence". You really don’t know what unexpected behaviours/uses may surface unless some experimentation happens. A product is not it’s design, a product is how it’s used. Just look at Twitter; it’s original intention/design was SMS text messaging, but look how it’s being used now; SMS is probably the least way people use it. And look how many different ways you can access it; 3rd party web, apps, toolbars, system tray,etc..And look at the new core features like, re-tweets and mentions, that have been incorporated into the design because people were using it this way. And look at all the use cases, originally it was about sharing what you are doing at that moment, now it’s being used as a customer service and promotions tool by the biggest companies on the planet…personally I use it for research, sharing links, getting help, and talking to rockstar consultants.
Imagine a project like Twitter was given the red-light as it seemed too risky, or other projects seemed less risky. We don’t even know the impact of the initial features and conceptual use case till we use it, let alone all that emergence (it manifests/has it’s own life…a teme).
Pilots
Proof of Concept is kind of similar to the idea of a pilot or even a prototype…you do something light weight and on a small scale.
But is a pilot different to experimentation?
Pilots are not about feasibility, aren’t they just the stage before release?
Usually pilots are more official. A product has been chosen, there is a strategy behind it, and the pilot is simply an early run before launching to make sure everything is working OK. But prior to this, did you experiment with other products, or did you choose the less risky or what seems as the more appropriate?
Is experimentation the stage before a pilot or is it an alternative to pilots?
The labels "experimentation" and "pilots" are sometimes interchanged. A while back at work I made a request to use a micro-blogging tool from our current content management vendor. There were many meetings (plans, security papers signed for hosted data) and away I went. I was given the product and invited a group of people to use it. At the time this product was performing badly (pretty much alpha stage so we didn’t take it further). But if it became a successful run we may have decided to purchase it, but from the beginning this was not the explicit intention, rather it was to have a go and see what it does (we did not have any strategy documents or a roadmap).
So did we run a pilot or experiment?
Does the fact that it wasn’t open to everyone have any weight on this distinction? Maybe, because of the low numbers it was a more controlled experiment, rather than a pilot?
Maybe it was an experiment because we had not bought the product as of yet, there was no strategy or roadmap?
Or maybe it was "experimentation" because it was bottom-up, rather than a top-down strategy. But I do not see why top-down ideas cannot be experimented, rather than deciding and planning on one path of action.
The context of pilots, and groups vs networks
You can pilot a Community of Practice (CoP) to get an idea of how a group works and coordinates in this new environment. All you need is a group of people to manifest the concept. And then we imagine it’s success would work for other types of groups…not always the case.
A good idea in your pilot would be to run a few different types of groups, to showcase the flexibility of these tools, and how their unstructured nature lends to different use cases ie. these tools aren’t necessarily used in one way, like an ATM machine is designed to be used one way.
One thing you can’t measure or see the benefits in piloting group spaces is see the value that visitors get from your community. Visitors to your community may ask questions, or provide answers, or read a wiki page or blog post and utilise that information. I say this because a pilot is a small scale, which means you ’aint gonna have many visitors, unless they are members of another CoP within the pilot.
I guess what I’m saying is that a pilot will not show the signs of cross CoP action. It will not demonstrate awareness and communication across groups…you know that silo bridging thing.
Just to be thorough when it comes to another dynamic like social networks, a pilot really isn’t as useful.
Unlike group spaces, social networks rely on network effects to reveal their usefulness and emergent nature.
eg. your telephone becomes more useful when someone else gets a new phone (ie. they join the network). A pilot with 5 people isn’t going to show the potential benefits and use cases that emerge when everyone is connected.
eg. Same goes with Facebook, etc. When I’m connected enterprise-wide I can see tag clouds, I get recommendations, I can see who is connected to who, serendipity will lead me to useful content by someone I don’t know but need to know…critical mass is needed for optimal emergence or gifts you receive from taking part in the system.
Andy Mcafee in his Drop the pilot post talks about the limitation of pilots in the context of social networks. Themes I got out of it are: #emergence #serendipity #awareness #diversity
From this post:
| "How many of us have found great information in some weird corner of the Web, someplace far from the presumed authorities? How many have had a question answered on Twitter by a stranger? Received unexpected praise or good wishes on Facebook or LinkedIn from someone we hadn’t thought of in a while? The smaller the scale of an ESSP deployment, the less likely all these good things become.
These realizations lead to an answer to the second question posed above. Enterprise 2.0 enthusiasts should abandon pilots and go as broad as possible right away. The risks of doing this are small and manageable, and the serendipitous benefits are many." |
For more on this see my post, Do group tools get more traction due to not requiring network effects and being in the context of certainty, which was inspired by a couple of posts by Michael Idinopulos called Skip the Pilot, and Launch E2.0 broad, then go deep.
Microblogging as a Stepping stone
In the latter link Michael talks about low threshold participation tools like micro-messaging as a stepping stone to higher effort tools. And he is serious about this as the company he works for, Socialtext, have their micro-blogging product, "Signals", both within the social software suite offering, and also as a standalone product. Michael says:
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"Signals was not just a useful tool, it was also a stepping stone that helped participants move to the right on the Participation curve (see image above). As participants started to get the hang of Signals, many started to ask about Socialtext’s other collaborative features: What are workspaces? How do I use the Dashboard? How do I look up an individual? After the webinar was over, a number of users wanted to go deeper by creating wiki workspaces to collaborate on tasks, projects, documentation, etc. We scheduled follow-up time with them to understand their collaborative needs and build tailored solutions. This story describes a launch approach that simultaneously achieves seemingly conflicting objectives:
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Pilots as learning stage
A post by Bertrand Duperrin about the Enterprise 2.0 Forum relates to pilots being about learning (rather than testing) before the official release, which is different to experimentation where something has just been made available, and is more about trying and testing:
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"It’s not a game anymore. Now projects are global and carried by the top management. That’s the end of social bubbles disconnected from reality. Companies think global and pilots are not made to test but are the learning stage before global rollout. I really appreciated Claire Flanagan’s approach that set a time limit (5 month) instead of limiting the number of users what allowed her to quickly get a critical mass (nearly 30 000 users) with an opt-in policy." |
In another post Bertrand reinforces this point:
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"The purpose is not to decide to carry on or not but to learn what will be needed to drive the program at a wider scale later |
Bertrand also mentions not to throw the baby out with the bath water, that we have to learn from failure, that failure is part of the path. An analogy of a car is quoted:
| "…if a car does not function it’s not because the concept of a car is bad, but because either the fuel is not good, the transmission is brocken or the engine is not well set." |
I often say that just say someone new to a vegetarian diet finds themselves not feeling very well, it doesn’t mean the vegetarian diet as a lifestyle is wrong, it just means that person was not very good at being one as they were not aware of all the food groups they need to cover to be healthy. Maybe they were not eating enough foods with vitamin B12, they can learn from failure and keep going on their new path.
Bertrand then says something related to the Clay Shirky excerpt at the start of this post, and that’s the notion of "risk"…and the use of the word "experiment" may have bad connotations (as does the word "social" in a business context), where usually business decisions are very carefully thought out to minimise risk
| "We can be sure that employee will think, even unconsciously “I’m fed up with all their crazes…I won’t buy before it’s definitive and official…no time to waste for something than can be shut down at any time…being a part of it may expose me and it may be a bad idea if the project goes wrong”. I already heard an employee saying “experimentation…do they think we are guinea-pigs ?”. Explaining that the experimentation is not “on” them but “with” them is easy…but never happens. Anyway, we must be aware that this word means lack of visibility and indecision, what is not reassuring when trying to engage employees." |
Bertrand goes on to compare this to pilots where it’s not about feasibility, but rather a decision has been made, and the pilot is just the phase before the release, but it’s important to understand that…
| "…the direction is known but that the path will be decided with them, hence the pilot…the company knows where to head to but must be aware of not being too directive or interventionist." |
