Jon DiPietro is Domesticating IT

Chris Dunlap, ISA Boston Section Vice President, kicks off our October meeting on Livestream.

I hosted a Web 2.0 workshop at last month’s ISA Fall Leader Meetings that was an open discussion of social media and collaborative technologies. The overwhelming interest was clearly focused on using video conferencing for holding meetings and presenting information. Before, during and after that workshop I’ve promised at least a dozen people that I would put together a comparison of available services and some hints and tips for using them.

In this post, I’m going to compare four different free services for conducting online meetings and/or presentations; DimDim , Ustream, Livestream and Skype. None of them is a perfect solution and they all have trade-offs that need to be considered for their applicability to your specific needs.

The Big Picture

Meetings vs. Presentations

The first question to answer is whether the collaboration is primarily a meeting or a presentation. While all of these services support online chat, only two of them permit muli-party audio or video conferencing. For meetings that are primarily one-way, Livestream and Ustream will be the best option. If you require audio or video conferencing capability, you need to look at either DimDim or Skype.

Audience Size

This is another critical factor, and will frequently dictate whether or not one of these services will fit the bill. DimDim’s free service will limit the number of attendees to 10, while Livestream’s audience can reach 50 and Ustream is unlimited. Skype’s limitations depend on how you’re using it – it allows up to 9 video conference participants, 25 audio and 50 chat.

Cameras and Desktops

Each of these services (except for Ustream) supports simultaneous broadcasting of both a webcam and computer desktop in one form or another. In my opinion, Livestream does the best job at this by a wide margin while Skype’s is pretty poor. The quality of the webcam broadcasting is always limited by the bandwidth of your Internet connection, but they all offer decent to excellent quality as long as you have a high speed link. Skype’s video quality is hands-down the best, with Livestream and Ustream tied for a very close second.

Head to Head

Paid Alternatives

While this article was meant to cover some free options, it’s probably worth listing a few options that are available on a paid basis for comparison purposes.

A Word of Caution

And that word is “firewall.” Many corporate firewalls block Skype and video streaming sites like Livestream and Ustream. It’s important to understand who your audience will be and take this into account.

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This presentation was given at the ACE 2010 Interactive Social Media Workshop in Chicago on 20-June, 2010.  It provides some tips for Twitter beginners.  You can also download the Getting Started on Twitter speaker’s notes.

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

This week’s High Five is about all things Internet.  It includes some interesting uses, abuses and threats that are not only worthy of mention but long term monitoring.

#5: The Answer Factory: Demand Media and the Fast, Disposable, and Profitable as Hell Media Model

I don’t generally use this space just to list “cool stuff.”  However, in addition to having pizazz, it seems to me that this model has some serious potential to become a game-changer.

Link: Wired

#4: Optimize LinkedIn Profile for SEO

Mike Volpe from Hubspot provides some very simple yet important tips for optimizing your LinkedIn profile (it led me to immediately make a couple of quick tweaks).  I am constantly evangelizing how important your online presence is, and this short tutorial is great for maximizing its effectiveness.

#3: China Blocks Wired.com With ‘Great Firewall’ – Updated

The conclusion from this article is that China’s algorithms for censoring the Internet were messing around with Wired magazine’s availability, which seems to be intermittently available.  The interesting nuggets from this article are the notations that China tends to block any sites with RSS feeds and blogs.  Why RSS feeds?  Because they are a push mechanism instead of pull.  In other words, it’s easier to track people when they have to visit a site to read what’s on it.  I know none of this is particularly shocking, but it’s important to understand what governments can do to encumber the Internet.  And before you start feeling too comfortable in the U.S. or E.U., read on…

Link: Wired

#2: Court to FCC: You Don’t Have Power to Enforce Net Neutrality

Net neutrality is the principle that your ISP (Internet Service Provider) should not be able to deliberately throttle back bandwidth for particular sites or protocols or otherwise interfere with them.  This ruling is about Comcast’s efforts to hamper use of the file sharing site BitTorrent.  Since these “torrents” are frequently used to illegally share files, there may not be much sympathy.  However, consider that Comcast has also been accused of interfering with Vonage as well, who is a competitor to their voice over IP service.  The courts and government seem to be setting the stage for an Internet that is going to be patrolled, regulated, fettered, and not at all like the one we are used to right now.

Link: Wired

#1: Senator Demands IP Treaty Details

This is a follow from last week’s story about the possible efforts by U.S. and E.U. authorities to deputize ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to be the Copyright Gestapo.  This week, we see that a U.S. Senator is having to file a Freedom of Information Act request to see the details of this treaty.  That the government is trying to hide information is nothing new, but the fact that this Senator is from the same political party as the current administration makes you wonder what’s in this bill that they don’t want people to know.

Link: Wired

Feel free to provide your thoughts and/or contributions…

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Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous spam,
Or to take arms against a sea of multi-level marketers
And, by opposing, unfollow them.

How many people should you follow on Twitter?  And should you automatically follow any one who follows you?  If not, how do you decide?  I’ve been asked these questions many times and so it is finally time to write a post about this topic.

How Many Is Enough?

This is not a simple question and there are several schools of thought.  In one corner, we have the “less is more” camp who believe that a smaller group of higher quality connections works better.  Seth Godin recently endorsed this approach in his blog post “Bullhorns are overrated.”  And in the other corner, we have the “strength in numbers” camp who believe that if 100 followers is good, then 100,000 followers is, well, a thousand times better.  Chris Brogan spoke about what he calls his “serendipity engine” in his post, “Depends How You Define Value.”

Personally, I come down more on the serendipity side of the fence.  I will follow back just about anyone who is a real person and seems to be using Twitter in a genuine manner.

Is There Any Risk?

There is no overt risk in following someone.  It’s not the equivalent of granting them access to your computer in any way.  However, it does give them the ability to send you a Direct Message (DM), which could conceivably contain a link to a malicious web site.  I never click on a link in a DM from someone I don’t know.  And in most cases, I will immediately un-follow anyone who sends me an unsolicited DM with a link to a web site.

How Do I Decide?

I have a two-layer system for deciding whether or not I will follow someone back.  In the first test is to analyze a few metrics directly from the email notification.

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1. The name is obviously the first thing to look at.  If it is something like “Porn Galore” then it’s a pretty quick decision.  Conversely, it could be a company or brand you don’t necessarily have an issue with, but neither are you particularly interested in what they may have to say.
2. I look at their follower ratio (number of followers versus number they are following).  In this example, there are no particular warning signs, as people with new accounts will frequently start by following a bunch of people.  If this ratio is more like 4 (followers) to 800 (following), this is a warning flag to me because it suggests this person is trying to quickly accumulate followers (and likely is using a computer program) and not looking to form connections.
3. The second metric is the number of tweets compared to the number of followers.  The idea here is that I am looking for people who have built a following over time, not over night.  In this case, there’s no particular warning flag either.

If none of these three metrics presents any show-stoppers, then I will click on the person’s profile and take a look a little more deeply.  Keep in mind that between the time when you received the follow message and then visit the profile, those metrics in the email could have changed dramatically so I will take a second look at those first.

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1. Case in point – notice that now the follower ratio has changed to 12/625.  This is now screaming, “Spammer!”
2. The next thing I look for is real profile information, like a bio and web page.  Taking the time to fill out this information is an indication that the person is genuine.  If a web page is there, it can be another warning flag if it looks suspicious.
3. Last, but not least, I will examine their Twitter updates to see what they are saying.  In this example, we have an obvious spammer who is trying to con people into signing up for programs that may or may not be legitimate.  Many of these scams will hijack your Twitter account and send out spam messages.

If you have any other tips or tricks, please leave them in the comments for everyone’s benefit!

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Back in July, I read an article about an ad agency who wrote a blog post criticizing Zappos over their review process for proposals after theirs didn’t make the final cut. At first blush, this sounds like a story of sour grapes but in reality, it’s much worse. The crux of the argument was that only 5 of the agency’s 25 page proposal were ever reviewed by Zappos, which in their mind was unfair and disrespectful. But as far as I’m concerned, if you’re an ad agency who can’t hook your reader in the first five pages then you’re not very good at your job. So how can this be a lesson for us to more effective communicators?

#1 Own it

The most stunning aspect of this story to me was the shifting of blame from the agency’s failure to deliver a compelling message to the vendor’s laziness. The burden of communication falls on the author. Period. Whether you are crafting a proposal, writing an email, authoring a blog post or designing a presentation, you must take responsibility for crafting a message in such a way that it will engage the reader. Our information-overloaded society leaves precious little time for things that don’t add value. Be respectful of the reader and recognize that if only 20% of your proposal is read, then “It’s not you, it’s me.”

#2 Use catchy titles and subject lines

This may sound obvious but think for a moment about how much thought you really put into the subject line of an email or the title of a presentation. The first step in crafting an effective title or subject is to tell people what they will get out from reading your content. For example, instead of titling your proposal “New Conveyor System Proposal,” try something like “Improving Efficiency and Capacity With a New Conveying Approach.” The first title is pretty typical, but automatically puts your message at a disadvantage by sounding pedestrian at best and a little desperate at worst. The second title makes a promise right out of the gate and sets an expectation that the reader will have something to gain from reading the proposal.

The second step is to use strong, concise words. Try to use words that personalize subject matter, like “you” and “your.” Also think about trying to strike an emotional chord. These can include anger, sympathy, fear, etc… Words like “tips” and “hacks” are examples of words that are emotionally enticing by creating intrigue. Finally, (when applicable) consider the search engine implications of your titles by using keywords “early and often.” This means choosing relevant words that are used as search terms and placing them as early as possible in your title. Then, use them often in your post to reinforce the relevance of the keywords. Just keep in mind that this should not be done at the expense of the humans reading the title and content; keep it readable.

I know my idea is in there somewhere!

#3 Don’t bury the lead

I’ve read a number of articles that talk about the journalistic tactic of not burying the lead, which means make sure that the most interesting and/or important idea in an article appears early and isn’t “buried” within the story. However, one of the best I’ve read comes from Copyblogger and is titled “What a Bestselling Author Can Teach You About Hooking Your Readers.” This article describes Steven Pressfield’s the lesson of using an “inciting incident,” which he had learned from screenwriter Robert McKee.

Pressfield is quoted as follows:

McKee has given me (and thousands of others) so many valuable lessons, it’d be hard to pick one out, but here it is:

The ‘inciting incident.’ I had never heard this term or focused on this concept before taking his Story Structure class. I did it in my writing, but only on instinct; I had no idea what I was doing. Having that idea crystallized helped me tremendously.

I now ALWAYS ask myself, even in short blog posts, What is the inciting incident? What event or moment gets this story rolling? It’s been a huge help.

If you go back and read the first paragraph of this post, you can see that I used this technique by relating a short story and immediately presenting the central plot. If you’re still reading, I guess it worked!

Again, many of the examples and links I’ve provided address blogs, but the principles apply equally to any other content you’re generating – including (and perhaps especially) emails.

#4 Make it sticky

At the risk of appearing to be a shill for this book, I find myself repeating my recommendation to read the book “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Other Die.”  Assuming you’ve accomplished the first three steps, the final task is to make your idea(s) sticky, which is to say memorable.  ”Made to Stick” presents six principles that help make ideas stickier:

1. Simple (prioritized, not dumbed down)
2. Unexpected (violate a schema, then use curiosity gaps)
3. Concrete (use sensory language to hook into multiple types of memory)
4. Credible (from authorities and/or statistics and details)
5. Emotional (what’s in it for your or appeal to identity)
6. Stories (simulation and inspiration)

Being a successful communicator requires that you get readers interested, then hook them so they pay attention, and finally present a memorable message.  Have I missed anything?

Photo credits:
‘Crybaby’ courtesy of loneymops from Flickr (creative commons)
‘World’s Messiest Office Cubicle Discovered in Colorado’ courtesy of Jeffery Beall from Flickr (creative commons)

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