Jon DiPietro is Domesticating IT

Weekly High Five lists the most interesting, compelling, and/or useful links of each week.

Today’s post is the first in a new weekly series that will be called “High Five,” in which I will list the five most interesting, compelling, and/or useful links from each week.  I know, it’s an annoyingly uncreative name but you’ll have to put with it.  I wasn’t simply being lazy; it was somewhat deliberate on my part.  The reason is that when you’re trying to build brand recognition (as I am here on DomesticatingIT), I think you can run the risk of being “too creative” in some cases.  Sometimes, giving something a quickly, easily recognizable name that augments your existing brand works too.

Having said that, on with the show…

The theme of this week’s High Five is “cautionary tales.”  Four of the five links are to stories or announcements regarding the effects of Web 2.0 on “traditional” means of communication.

#5: Shameless Self-promotion

The first link is a shameless self-promotion for the new DomesticatingIT fan page on Facebook.  But hopefully you’ll simply recognize this as practicing what I preach; Be Authentic, Relentless, and Everywhere.

http://twitter.com/domesticatingit/status/4835717315

#4: The End of the Email Era

This article generated a fair amount of chatter on Twitter.  While I do think the title of the Wall Street Journal article (Why Email No Longer Rules…) may overstate the case a bit for the sake of sensationalism, it makes an important point.  It’s also a point that I harp on in many of my social media presentations; the communication landscape is changing as anyone with teenage or college age children knows.  My daughters’ primary means of communication are text messaging and Facebook updates (in that order).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203803904574431151489408372.html

#3: Judge: Cellphone Ringtones Are Not Concerts

I am fascinated by the recording industry’s ongoing declaration of war against its own customers and this article is an example of its unbridled arrogance and avarice.  What organization (other than our government) thinks it’s OK to charge people twice for the good or service?  Of course, there is that old adage about software development; “You pay us to put the bugs in, and you pay us to take the bugs out.”

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/10/judge-mobile-phone-ringtones-are-not-concerts/

#2: Google Wave Explained

This is a nice, short video that provides a simple (albeit abridged) explanation of just what Google Wave is.  I’ve just secured a Google Wave invitation and will surely be blogging about this in the future.  Be forewarned; this is a game changer and it deserves your attention.

http://holykaw.alltop.com/google-wave-explained-11?c=1

#1: ISA replaces annual expo with new knowledge-based event

This is an important article regardless of whether or not you have any interest in the International Society of Automation.   The ISA announced that it will be ending its trade show exhibition with an event more focused on “knowledge.”  I made my thoughts known on Gary Mintchell’s blog, so I won’t recount them right at this moment.  The more universal point here is that we are seeing another example of the Web 2.0 world imposing its will on traditional platforms for marketing, communication, and collaboration.

http://www.automationmag.com/200910132568/ma-content/industry-news/isa-replaces-annual-expo-with-new-knowledge-based-event.html

Feel free to provide your thoughts and/or contributions…

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Seth Godin's "Purple Cow"

If you’ve been reading this blog or attending any of my presentations, it’s no secret that I’m a fairly big fan of Seth Godin. I watched a 30 minute video of his presentation, “Using New Media, New Marketing, and New Thinking to Create 10 Bestselling Books.”  The timing of this was interesting because it came a couple of days after a discussion at the ISA Fall Leaders Meeting in which I was struggling to reconcile my assertion that the overall value of information is approaching zero with the fact that book publishing (at ISA and elsewhere) is holding strong compared to subscription media like newspapers and magazines.  Enter Godin with his ten stories about ten marketing strategies for ten books he wrote.  In it, he talks about the successes and failures of these various strategies.  More to the point, however, he summarizes these at the end of the presentation and, from his typically unique perspective, the reasons why they did or didn’t work.

So, why am I talking about book publishing in a technology blog?  First, it fits into a recurring theme of mine that Web 2.0 technologies are democratizing information and streamlining communications in a way that affects any organization whose primary mission is knowledge transfer; which includes just about any professional association.  Second, since publications is such a significant aspect of what ISA does, I wanted to highlight this presentation.

Since this video is thirty minutes long, I am summarizing his closing points:

• Books are souvenirs:  “There is nothing in a book that I can’t get faster, cheaper, and quicker online.”  He exemplifies this by asking how many people proudly display their audio book collections.
• Permission the only asset: “The only asset you can build on the Internet is permission. The privilege of delivering anticipated, personal, and relevant messages to people who want to get them.”
• Marketing is conversations: “If you can make people talk about what you’re doing because you wrote the right thing, then you win.”
• Words for readers, not readers for words: “You’re not in the business, any more, of finding readers for your words. And the reason is that readers are too hard to find. You’re in the business of finding words for your readers. Once you build the permission base, you get to say, ‘OK, what do my readers want next?’”
• Blogs work: “The very nature of dripping ideas into a place where they can spread.”
• It’s not about selling books: Godin doesn’t try to sell books any more than Disney tries to sell T-shirts. If you’re in the idea business, the books are going to sell themselves.

The full video is embedded here and even if you can’t spare the full thirty minutes, I still recommend watching at least the first few minutes.

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Let’s talk about email. This has been a controversial subject for many years and for several reasons. Members (rightfully) complain that ISA sends too many emails. ISA (rightfully) responds that it is trying to deliver the information that’s important to the membership. Right strategy, wrong tactic. The mistake here is that ISA has been wrestling with the best way to interrupt people, sort of like looking for the friendliest way to insult somebody. I’ve heard it said that the high number of members that don’t provide an email address is evidence of a law adoption rate and/or preference for email and Internet use. My takeaway is that is more represents a “Don’t call us, we’ll call you” attitude. It’s a one size fits none approach.

The solution is, once again, permission-based or opt-in marketing. Members must be able to fine tune the content they wish to receive and the manner in which they receive it. Transitioning from push (email) to pull (blog) publishing would enable this to happen. ISA communication should become primarily blog-based publishing with easy sharing and subscription tools.

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"Battlefield-13" from zhengxu on Flickr Creative Commons

“No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.”  This quote from Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, chief of staff for the Prussian army in the late 1800′s and one of the great strategists, has had a profound effect on modern warfare tactics and forms the basis for a concept called “Commander’s Intent.”  When orders are handed down through the U.S. Army, each has a short, plain speaking description of the intent of the specific order.  These statements get more and more specific as the orders are given down the command chain.  The idea is that each commander, company, and soldier has a clear understanding not only of the plan, but the intent of the plan.  While plans may fail due to any number of reasons, the soldiers are able to adapt, improvise, overcome and complete their mission if they understand the commander’s intent.

And so it is with social media strategy, I think.  If you empower your organization to truly engage in social media and to build trust with your customers, constituents, and colleagues then they will not necessarily be entering into battle, but it will still be the same sort of fluid, unpredictable situation.  It’s as important to communicate the commander’s intent to them as it is to have a detailed strategy.

To that end, I have come up with a memorable and (hopefully) “sticky” acronym for what I think is a useful guide for the social media commander’s intent; BARE.  This stands for “Be Authentic, Relentless, and Everywhere.”

Be Authentic

Don't be the online equivalent of a streotypical used car salesman

OK, in order to make this work I had to settle on one word here but the reality is that “authentic” is a stand-in for several others like affable and approachable.  Generally speaking it means that you need to be yourself, and treat others the way you want to be treated (sound familiar?).  Using Twitter is a nonstop, mechanized press release squawk box is not authentic.  Talking about relevant industry news or celebrating a customer’s success is.  It’s important to be conversational and respectful of online friends and followers by posting information that is relevant to them.  That’s not the same as saying it needs to be important.  Posting pictures of the company’s holiday party isn’t going to make it easier for anyone to do their job, but it tells a story and makes a human connection with people.  Most people actively engaged in social media have an extremely sensitive B.S. detector and will flame you without conscience for being disingenuous or disrespectful online.

Be Relentless

It takes time to build a network.  However, it’s something that must be done steadily and with purpose.  Eventually, if your content is worth following the network will continue to grow over time.  Canyons are formed in similar ways.  Most of the formation is done slowly and constantly over long periods of time by small bodies of moving water and wind.  But there are also storms and floods that cause torrents of water to flow through them a cut away large swaths of land in one shot.  This is the equivalent of “going viral” on the web when you post content that gets lots of traction and attracts large numbers of followers in a short period of time.  Slow and steady wins the race, as they say, so stay the course and keep working toward that flood!

Be Everywhere

This is not to be taken literally – you only have so many resources to dedicate so you need to be smart about it.  Re-purposing content is the key to this strategy.  By developing systems that can deliver a single bundle of content to multiple social media channels, you can maximize your productivity and minimize your time investment.  One technology that allows you to do this is Posterous.  By simply sending a single email to your Posterous account, it will decide which channels should also receive the content and reproduce it in multiple places.  For example, sending an email with a group of photos attached causes Posterous to post the pictures to a previously authorized Flickr account.  It will also convert them to a slide show for display on your Posterous page and send updates with links to your Twitter account and Facebook fan page.  You need to squeeze every drop of value from all of the content that you generate by posting it everywhere you can, with as little effort as possible.  This will generate the most traffic back to your content and also have the best chance of finding people where they live.  Not everyone uses Twitter just like not everyone uses Facebook.  After all, why did Willy Sutton rob banks?  Because that’s where the money is.

Be Authentic, Relentless, and Everywhere!

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This brings me full circle to the impetus for this blog entry. The process of selecting the right software developer or consulting firm to undertake a major project is very difficult. I have walked many of those mine fields and passed the corpses along the way. I am a firm believer that high quality software development requires programmers who have some amount of subject matter expertise. The one nugget of practical advice I’ll offer here is to search for a consultant who can tell you something non-technical about your project that you didn’t already know. Then you’ll know that you have someone who has more to offer than stamping out lines of code. If you ask a user what they want a program to do, they will generally struggle to articulate an answer (it’s a rare and beautiful thing when they can, believe me). When they actually get their hands on something, however, you will not be able to shut them up! They will generally be more than happy to tell you what’s good, what’s not, and what’s missing. The best programmers will know much of this ahead of time and, by all means, be able to adapt, overcome, and improvise. Otherwise, you could very well become one of the many who have uttered the phrase, “You built me what I asked for, but that’s not what I want!”

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