Tag: rich harris

The transition from Sci-fi to Sci-fact.

Posted by Rich Harris – December 20, 2011

I don’t know when these things will happen (probably not in my life time), what they will look like, or who will be involved, but all the pieces are now there technologically to achieve any of this. I don’t think the result of what I’m talking about will be like the Terminator movies, THX 1138 or Back to the Future II.

I do think however you’re going to see a world where we frown on excessive amounts of means to get to the desired end. We will get to the point where we cringe at the mere thought of having to factor in too much time and effort spent on the “how” versus the quality and experience of the end result.

With people generating so much content and data about themselves and thousands of algorithms across all types of network platforms and apps making use of human patterns, we make what used to be a futuristic movie idea into a reality. It’s happened before on smaller scales and it’ll continue to happen at an exponentially more rapid pace, year over year.

Down the road….

Personal profile data will be more valuable than we ever thought possible. It will redefine our entire economy, and political structure. It will dismantle and dilute thousands of years of regional cultural traditions across the globe in a fraction of the time it took for them to become what they are today. Over time, every new generation born into the data driven world will care less and less about their ethnicity and culture and more about being entertained and stimulated as quickly as possible with as little effort.

Personal profile data will be bought and sold at a level that far transcends anything any social network could have dreamed up. There will be large black and white markets for personal data that make organizations like Anonymous and Wikileaks look like little kids on a playground, digging around their lunch boxes for treats. The competition for ownership and control of personal data will be the new War on Drugs.

All data will be part of a centralized system – search queries, geo-location/GPS patterns, content upload/download habits, emails, personal and professional online calendars, shopping/consumer trends – of every individual. Eventually it won’t be considered offensive or inappropriate because it’ll just be part of what we are and do and make and consume. Like my generation born into TV’s and automobiles, future generations will be born not knowing what a non-data, non-digital world looks like.

There will be human-esque robots with a Siri-like system built in that records voice patterns when spoken to by its owner. It will learn moods, inflection, etc. so it can make adjustments so that your day goes as smooth as possible.

Siri-like technology will be built into the work we do in certain industries and on a grand scale.

Neighborhoods full of track homes with built-in verbal command systems to run appliances, make coffee, order your groceries for delivery, turn lights/temp on or off, etc. will start popping up and the airwaves will be filled with real estate ads touting the latest generation of “innovation homes.” As a result industries will crumble and new ones will be born. For example, who would need to purchase light switches anymore or dimmers or all the other tactile stuff currently used in the home?

Corporate websites will look like digital ghost towns as they are replaced by branded feeds, mobile apps and channels into your home, transportation and places of employment.

Just like everything else, old generations will deem it ‘bad’ or a ‘loss’ or ‘scary’ or ‘forgetting what’s really important’. New generations will deem it ‘good’ and ‘normal’ and will perceive the older generations as ‘old folks who don’t get it’.

I don’t think any of this is bad or good, it just is.

Twenty Things I Learned at SXSW 2011

Posted by Rich Harris – March 18, 2011

What an exhausting and amazing experience SXSW was this year. I met Dave Grohl. I watched an inspiring and yet heartbreaking documentary on Fishbone. I met many new people, the good, the bad and the douchebag. If you’ve never been to SXSW, there is nothing like it. With music blasting out of every venue, new technology being introduced, and the number of human facets being displayed simultaneously in one city at once is astounding. One hour at SXSW is like 8 hours in real life. It just flies. Anyhow….I had to list some of my observations and experiences here otherwise I’ll never stop buzzing from it. Until next year…

Love it or hate it, here’s my list

  1. Lone Star beer, if consumed gradually over several days, changes your body chemistry, most likely permanently.
  2. Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters crew are some of the nicest guys on the planet. They also put on one of the best rock shows I’ve ever seen.
  3. Hoards of drunk women trying to look sexy walking through mass crowds on cracked streets and brick roads with spiked 6-inch heels is one of the funniest damn things I have ever seen.
  4. Tight V-neck shirts, tight black jeans, white belts and white patent leather boots with a haircut resembling Greg Brady in the late ’70′s is something I will never ever wear. I urge you to do the same. Mick Jagger and others made it look good …..back in ’72 where it belonged.
  5. Not all music industry vets are self-serving thieves and ass clowns. I met some real people and my bleak outlook on the music biz has been lifted slightly.
  6. Fishbone are the biggest, greatest and most uniquely influential band to never make it huge. Their documentary “Every Day Sunshine” is hard to swallow, yet a testament to how many hearts they’ve touched with their unrelenting individuality and talent. There will never be another Fishbone. Ever. They deserve a spot in the Rock’n'Roll Hall of Fame, hands down.
  7. Homeless people would rather have an iPad 2 than food.
  8. Rafael Saadiq’s backup band are some of the funkiest dudes I have ever met. Everything about their playing smells like some of the greatest peak moments in James Brown’s prime funk era.
  9. I’ve always hated hard cider but Strongbow Dry Cider from England was pretty damn good.
  10. Walking around wearing Chuck Taylors on pavement for 6 days straight when you are made out of 268 lbs of  pure pancakes and hot wings does not bode well on the feet, knees, hips, lower back, sanity, or the soul.
  11. Angelo from Fishbone is the snazziest dresser from Jupiter that I’ve ever had the pleasure to photograph or be in the presence of.
  12. There is such thing as shitty BBQ in Texas…. (street vendors)
  13. ATM fees ranging from $4-5 don’t hurt so bad when you are exhausted, parched, and hurting…..until you realize Austin’s desire to make your life ‘convenient’ at SXSW was really just legalized rape.
  14. No one can possibly see everything there is to see at SXSW and still live to tell the tale.
  15. Booth babes never get old.
  16. When an inebriated man dressed as Gumby wandering the streets has something to say, people listen.
  17. If you look like a conservative software engineer at SXSWi, it’s still ok to check out mobile app booths wearing green tights, a cape, and knee high Doc Martens.
  18. I’m glad it only happens once a year.
  19. Always pack 2 extra livers and a spare aorta.
  20. Being around that many people is still electrifying to me. Bands blasting out of every venue, great food and good friends remind me of the importance of being alive, sharing with others, and why I dig it so much.

Until next year.

Onward…..

Favorite Music of 2010: This List Goes to 11

Posted by Rich Harris – December 31, 2010

It’s been a long year with far more peaks than valleys…and thank goodness because 2009 was an asshole. My music choices always ride the wave along with me. Here’s a short list of albums that I’d default to on my iPod, or in iTunes while at work, that did something cool for me while I had them blasting in my ears at “11″.

Some of it is old, some new, but all of it resonated with me on some level that always brought me back for more and I recommend listening to any of these when you have an chance. Their place in this list does not reflect ‘better or worse’….it’s just a list ‘of’, yo.

“Crack The Skye” by Mastodon – These guys rank high in the ‘thinking man’s metal’ category. As a drummer I’m a little biased here but their drummer Brann Dailor is not just phenomenal technically, he does a great job upholding the epic journey that this record was meant to be. He has a way of being loud with finesse, being busy without overdoing it, and being interesting and innovative without sounding cocky. He plays for the sake of playing, and it shows on this record. The two epic tunes that I recommend are “The Czar: Usurper/Escape/Martyr/Spiral” and “The Last Baron.”

“These Four Walls” by We Were Promised Jetpacks – I was told about these guys by some random person on Twitter after posting something about Frightened Rabbit (another great band). These young lads from Scotland write some pretty catchy indie rock with an extremely present Scottish accent in their phrasing and singing. With lot of great lyrics, hooks and quirky yet palpable guitar parts and changes, I’d recommend these guys to anyone that listens to bands like Bloc Party, etc. The catchy tune on here for you radio hit listeners is definitely “Quiet Little Voices” but the ballad on this one that I really dig is “An Almighty Thud.”

“Pixel Revolt” by John Vanderslice - John has been a California/bay area staple for a long time, living (and owning his own recording studio Tiny Telephone) in San Francisco. He’s toured with bands like Death Cab for Cutie and others. He probably has the quirkiest indie rock sound out of all the music I currently own. A mix of electronic sound effects, old vintage instruments, great analog recording, and interesting song writing really make his stuff stand out. He’s great at telling stories in his songs and there’s no shortage of those on this record. My fav song on here is “Plymouth Rock.”

“Come Around Sundown” by Kings of Leon – These guys have always been hit or miss with me on their records. Some songs are really amazing and then all the others feel like filler or are just kinda boring. After the huge success of the previous record, this one they definitely went above and beyond, with big epic choruses and production. Even though their singer’s raspy voice can get to me after half a record, the song “Pyro” on this latest release is amazing. The video for it is really moving as well. This record, more than the others, is worth a full album purchase.

“Wrath” by Lamb of God – I embrace the fact that at the core, I will always be a metalhead. This record reminds me why every time. Pardon the additional drum bias here but Chris Adler is one of the most solid, creative, and aggressive sounding metal drummers out there. What really makes this record for me is the combo of Chris’ drumming and their single-note guitar riffs on the lower strings that are just plain pissed off. These guys got all the groove, aggression and riffery that Slipknot has but without the sonic chaos element. This record is straight up amazing.

“Death to The Pixies” by The Pixies – I have to admit that I’m a late bloomer to these guys. I know that Frank Black and crew are one of the original gangsters of their sound/genre and it didn’t even really click with me until a friend put them on a mix CD and had me watch Fight Club again. After listening to “Where is my Mind?” about 800 times I finally bought this record and ended up really digging almost every song, start to finish.

“Sigh No More” by Mumford & Sons – I just got into this other Scottish group over the last month or so and I listen to this record at least 5-6 times a week. Their sound is kind of a raucous/folky sound with great vocal harmonies and an organic punk rock vibe on a couple tunes. They make great use of the banjo on some of the bigger choruses. I heard they’re amazing live and I can’t wait to catch a show.

“On Approach” by Everest – A friend of mine sent me the video for their tune “Let Go” and I was hooked. The drummer did the vocals and still maintained a solid groove which is tough. He’s got a great voice and his vocal tone is similar to the guy from Train but with a way looser feel. Lots of really thoughtful songwriting on this record.

“Renegades” by Rage Against The Machine – I’ve been a huge RATM fan since their self-titled came out but more for the grooves and riffs than the politics. Brad, Tim and Tom hold down the biggest riffs between them that I’ve ever seen from a trio of musicians. Their grooves bounce 50,000 fans at the same time at any live show with no tricks or extra touring guitarists added into the mix. This record is them doing a bunch of covers. Normally I shy away from that type of thing but I have to say their choice of covers on this one is excellent. The one particular song on this album that kicked me in the head the hardest was their cover of Cypress Hill’s “How I Could Just Kill A Man.” If you have ANY sense of groove, the chorus in this version of that song will blow your mind.

“The Ortolan” by The Deadly Syndrome – These guys were up-sold to me on Pandora with their song “I Hope I Become A Ghost”. They definitely fall into the folk/indie category and do a great job mixing in piano, quirky acoustic guitar parts and groove.

“Slowhole to China” by Clutch - I’ve never heard a hard rock band like Clutch. They take the best of the blues, funk, hard guitar rock, a few martians from outer space, and then deep fry them in the back of a rusty 1970′s pick up truck somewhere in the south. This record, containing a bunch of rare and unreleased tracks, is one of the most groove-oriented hard rock albums I’ve heard in a long time. If you listen the title track “Slowhole to China” and allow the heavy Zeppelin-esque riff set in after the intial intro, you will not be dissappointed. Your head will start moving and you’ll want to punch stuff. I can’t get enough of Clutch.

Onward.

Prop 19: The New California [a theoretical jaunt]

Posted by Rich Harris – October 28, 2010

I don’t have any answers, but I have lots of questions and an imagination.

I was born and raised in this state. I’m not offended by the responsible use of alcohol or marijuana. But man, let’s face it….it’s a seriously crazy and interesting time right now in California. With people publicly smoking weed in the stands in San Francisco during this year’s World Series while state authority figures look the other way. Fans are practically smoking alongside the players themselves…..With voting just around the corner and Proposition 19 on the ballot, I wasn’t just pondering how publicly stoned  the general population might soon become (which may or may not even be the case), but I’ve been more pondering the effects on our economic and social culture and how it will be affected by the legalization/decriminalization of the substance here in this state. We have spent decades building industries, advertising, brands, lifestyles, the way we cook and serve food, and everyday purchasing decisions around alcohol consumption. We did the same with cigarettes and now are spending millions trying to get people to quit smoking and stop feeding the ultimate poster child for greed and gluttony that is Phillip-Morris. The ramifications, both short and long-term, of Prop 19 passing, are interesting to conceptualize and I think ripple much wider and deeper than most are really considering.

I’ll outline a few thoughts, guesses and speculations below. My disclaimer here is that I’m not suggesting you vote yes OR no. That’s up to you. This post isn’t so much about my opinion on the matter as much as it is just envisioning what a state I lived in my whole life would look like in a culture that has legalized pot layered into it’s everyday. I’ve been contemplating recently, all the little facets and details of American culture that might be affected by true legalization. For the sake of apropos word choice, it’s a trip.

Let’s assume that we live in a ‘Prop 19 passed’ world where the Feds don’t do anything, plead the fifth with a refusal to publicly condemn or embrace what California is trying to do, so they can sit back and observe and let us run our own experimental petrie dish, opening it up for US corporations to exploit California’s new mind-altering landscape, firing on all bong-shaped cylinders….. What might the ‘New California‘ look like? Take everything you’ve seen, done, experienced online and off, in the media, the workplace, on TV in a bar or restaurant, that had alcohol in the picture and replace every drink with a pipe or joint in hand. Replace every beer pitcher with a hookah. Now tie industries, commercialism, sex appeal, peer pressure, news feeds, social media content, discussions, stock prices of companies, retail merchandise, signs in airplanes, episodes of COPS, SNL sketches, and more….to the fact that it’s now legal and a functional integrated layer of our social lives. It might drastically change the nature of our decompression time at home or on vacation if you replace beer and cocktails with it. Think about all the industry and employment and job types this would affect, alter, destroy and create. Will beer bottle manufacturing facilities slowly be nudged aside to make room for smoke accessory manufacturing and assembly lines? How will crime and the ebb and flow of human statistics be altered month over month when it comes to prison time, car accidents, drug use, productivity at work and in school? Will teaching methods change? What kinds of things, good and bad, would happen to California and it’s residents if we could just stroll into Jim Bob’s Grog Shop to pick up a pack of marijuana cigs and 8 bags of Cool Ranch (instead of the normal 1 or 2)?

In my opinion the legalization of this could completely reshape our commercial economy as we know it and open thousands of minds while simultaneously closing thousands of others. I have a bunch of questions about what that would look like for us California residents. I hope those of you that live here are at least thinking about it too before you hit the voting booth.

What about tourism? “Welcome to California, the Golden State of the harvest….grapes, citrus and buds oh my.” Wine-tasting won’t be the only popular road trip into the Napa Valley. Will Disneyland start selling hemp-woven Mickey Mouse ears to the kiddies in an effort to be more ‘green’ while poppa picks up a sno-cone and a skunk-infused churro from cart #14 in Frontier Land? Those slightly campy state-funded commercials with The Terminator and The Shriver (Maria) about ‘coming to California to visit or live‘ might have a different zing to them.

What about family gatherings and the mix of older generations and newer generations under the same roof? Will grampa be outside drinking a beer or Scotch or glass of wine while his 22 year old grandson smokes a bowl while they catch up on life? How would that look and would it play out smoothly or would it introduce a new struggle within family structures, belief systems, and generational gaps? If it’s legal, a drinking man of an older generation that was raised on the media plague of ‘reefer madness’ SHOULD technically be able to embrace a pot-smoking man of a newer generation because no law is broken, right? But would that old man be able to change the goggles that he has used to view the world and his family & friends for so many decades to new more updated ones so that he can still feel comfortable chatting it up with his pot-smoking grandsons at the next BBQ? When there’s a function or gathering that is heavily religious but includes alcohol consumption – i.e. wedding, etc. – will people only be offended by the pot smoke break guy and not the cigarette smoke break guy?

What about the social ramifications both online and off for adults and teens? Will the nature of photos, videos, Facebook statuses and Tweets start to take a different shape and if they do, what would that look like? I wonder if, because everyone posts a picture of everything they are excited about on Facebook – food, alcohol, parties, kids, events, travel, art… – we’ll now see thousands of pictures of someone’s new purple stash they just picked up. Will this content make or break connections with people emotionally and shift the nature of Facebook’s effect on how we’ve all started connecting with each other. Will it destroy friendships or create new ones? Will they have to add the ‘pot smoker’ option to dating site profiles?

My brain wormholes so deep into the different segments of our society in an effort to try and understand and speculate on the ramifications of a pot-legal state. What do you think about or envision to be a new reality if Prop 19 were to pass? Are you only focusing on the negative or the positive and why?

Onward.

The Self-Authorization of Our Own Digital Cloning

Posted by Rich Harris – September 9, 2010

After the launch of Facebook Places, and seeing it show up as part of my most used social app, Facebook, I was reminded of something that is becoming increasingly important for us to realize and remember. We are witnessing the early stages of the ultimate convergence of sociology, human behavior, and billions of data packets sailing over millions of miles of network cables. Like it or not, Facebook is bigger in concept and theory than Mark “The Zuckster” Zuckerberg could ever understand, bigger than the ‘original internet’ ever had a shot at being, now that data is finally able to be humanized.

One almost humorous observation I’ve made is that the same people who complain or are fearful of this are the same ones that are also contributing to it, whether they realize it, like it, hate it, or not. Every time you update your status about what you had for dinner, your struggles as a parent, how much you like your job, when you last went to Disneyland and how fun it was, etc. –  algorithms collect, organize and attempt to construct a ‘virtual you’ over time period that can be stored in a multitude of ways, deconstructed by ad agencies and reconstructed as needed to serve you content that they hope will be as close to your heart strings as possible. Because you have provided the data about yourself from your own brain and fingertips, this content statistically has a higher and higher percent chance of resonating with you as time goes on after they measure your continued responses. As we continue to voluntarily provide more insight into our likes, dislikes and fears. We are constructing a virtual version or copy of humanity in the form of patterns that fill up a multitude of databases. Unless you are in high-tech, this happens without the majority of us even realizing it because we are distracted by our own emotions and the day to day stresses of life and onslaught of news feeds that now pour in from every direction. We also aren’t taught to think about the web that way.

I’m sure I sound like a whack job (and to some extent I am) but a simpler way to describe it is this (I’m sure most of you have seen this before): When you see a new animated movie come out like Avatar, their goal is to as accurately as possible, recreate realistic human physical motion and movement so that the characters look as authentic as possible and are believable. In a production studio, they do so by making the actors wear a body suit covered in sensors that connect up to a computer program. They then have the actor do certain movements for the movie to support various scenes, etc. While they are moving around, the sensors are recording these movements and it creates a 3D image of those movements on the screen, completing a virtual version of that person and their physical/movement characteristics. The social monopolization of the web is doing the exact same thing except it’s with human behavior on a global scale. By creating an account on a social network or site so that we can willingly populate it with content from our daily lives and true selves, we have officially authorized the creation of digital clones of us as a species by companies so that it can be utilized for business and science.

Fortunately, computers aren’t capable of creating emotion via chemicals and hormones by the nanosecond like we are so ‘rise of the machines’ ain’t happening anytime soon….but hey, it’s fascinating shit.

Onward.

Apple: The Forbidden Fruit, iHolics, PReemption

Posted by Rich Harris – August 17, 2010

My first iPhone: The iPhone 4

I finally broke down. Not the epiphany in counseling type, but more the technology type. The BlackBerry rocked before social media came and forced it’s OS to be more app friendly for Twitter, Facebook, etc. It’s safe to say that for many, the new need for multiple social apps and other ‘always on/connected’ apps were just too much for the BB push technology pipeline. After many crashes over a few years with multiple social media/content client apps, I was sick of java errors, hang ups, and a mobile experience that has been outdated for 4 years now….I needed a change. So being that I was already an Apple product user in everything else I do online, it was time to switch.

I love my iPhone 4 and have witnessed none of the issues related to Antennagate. I dig the user experience, the aesthetic, the apps…..all of it. It totally fits me and my life. The only issue I had with it was trying to install the 4.0.1 update to fix the signal issue. My issue basically was when attempting the update, it got about 3/4 of the way through and hung and then my phone was essentially bricked so I had to take it into the Apple store. My issue was a one off. Otherwise the phone rocks so I wasn’t trippin’ or considering the device a ‘failure.’ However, I did have an interesting experience at the Genius Bar that I’ll explain further down this post.

The Apple Store replaced my phone no questions asked and I was up and running again. All good. I’ve been in tech long enough to know that sometimes things fail or are defective. I’m cool with that. Now then…..

What is Wrong With Questioning Companies & Products That You Love?

I don’t understand the human need to invest so much blinder-level emotional commitment to Apple, or any company for that matter, that they are willing to get on their knees and drink in all the cool-aide, figuratively beer-bonged down their throats, regardless of how shitty it can sometimes taste if said figurative batch is fucked up. They just keep drinking. The power of customers connecting with each other via social channels STILL hasn’t empowered Apple fan boys enough to break free of the clutches of the black turtleneck so that they fully think for themselves as consumers. The weird thing about the Apple phenomena is that these very same customers would blow the whistle on any other company, product or service if they ever had a simliar experience. No one will ever be this loyal to Sony, Philips, Samsung, or even Microsoft (for the most part). Even then, the word loyal is probably too level-headed of a word in this scenario….sometimes, based on my convos with good friends who love Apple and a recent experience I had at the Genius Bar in the Los Gatos Apple Store, I wonder if a slight obsession has chemically altered people’s brains somehow after they’ve bought their first Apple product. Maybe our Macbook Pro built-in cameras spew a fine mist of the world’s strongest opiate into our face during use so we get a euphoric numbness and sense of relief that we attribute to Apple products all Pavlov style ….who knows…anyhow, I digress…

My name is Rich Harris, and I too am an iHolic, just like you. But as iHolics, we are entitled to be continually impressed by, passionate about and extremely critical of this awesome company called Apple and it’s suite of products, kapeesh? My kids question me as their father during disagreements, etc. Does that mean they don’t love and respect me? NO.

Side Note: My First Genius Bar Experience

Maybe it’s because he was burnt the F*** out from all the hype rolling in the door and asking him about antennas, etc. but his response when I questioned him about the 4.0.1 update crashing my phone etc., I felt was a little disturbing. I told him that my iPhone had bricked from the update and he says to me, “yeah I don’t know why everyone is making a big deal out of the signal being accurately displayed on the phone, who looks at that anyway?”. What the hell kind of answer is that? I’d say that not only is that important but companies have made that a priority since mobile phones came out! Just like when Apple launched a phone in the beginning that didn’t support MMS even though every other crappy flip phone supported it and had for years, this signal accuracy bug in my opinion is just another “stupid.” The fact that the Apple Store employee tried to minimize this right in front of me and disregard the issue is even more ridiculous. In fact, if I ran that store, he would’ve been in the unemployment line the next day. Call me an asshole but when customers invest as much passion and money in their “Apple Lifestyle” as they currently do, we’re allowed to expect the BEST from a company and it’s employees that claim it to BE the best. The best doesn’t mean you don’t have flaws and bugs, but the best does mean that you don’t release your products with really lame amateur issues.

Antennagate: No Pedestal Can Transcend The Pressure of Social Media

A PR department has basically two jobs: Announcements & Damage Control (preemptive & post). Both of these fall under the over-arching umbrella of perception. Antennagate was a perfect example of a great company with even greater products that pushed their social media ignorance and side-stepping a little too far. It is true that the acceptable amount of iPhones with antenna issues fell within the acceptable failure rate threshold (all technology hardware companies have one). So the amount of customers with issues and the issue itself, really WEREN’T the issue. The issue was that they tried to do the notorious Apple PR ‘brush off’ during a time when direct communication via social media is at an all time high, run by the people, syndicated by the people, all FOR the people….a large part of those people this time around were considering buying their first iPhone, and because that fact was a component of the timing, while Apple will recover of course (their latest earnings are insane), they will pay for this financially and already have, big time.

There was a really great article on Mashable about what we can learn from this from a PR and social media perspective titled, “4 Lessons Small Businesses Can Learn from Apple’s Antennagate“. The four things (with some quotes from the post) they cover in this article are:

  • Address The Real Problem – “Part of what got Apple into trouble was its initial approach to Antennagate. After Steve Jobs blew off some of the concerns, Apple admitted there was a problem, but blamed it on a software issue and sidestepped the very real hardware problem.”
  • Taken Control of The Situation – “When you’re in crisis mode, the last thing you need is to have the situation spiral completely out of your control. Establish control of the situation as quickly as you can.”
  • Make Reparations and Don’t Be Cheap – “If you find yourself in a crisis and you are at fault, don’t be afraid to make it up to your customers, no matter the cost. While it may be very painful in the short-term, it could very well be what saves your company in the long run.”
  • Better Late Than Never – “While Apple made many mistakes during the entire Antennagate saga, in the end it admitted that there was a problem and took enough steps to keep consumers happy.”

Dear Apple

I love your products. I have none of the well publicized issues with my iPhone 4. I love the phone and life is good. I will continue to use nothing but Apple products for all my mobile/computing needs. HOWEVER, you need to get onboard with the social side of things. You need to be leveraging social media and it’s channels to not only speak the truth quickly when problems arise like most product companies nowadays, but you also should take a long hard look at how much headache you can save with a simple ongoing blog post on the issue, or a hashtag on Twitter with real-time info on what’s going on so we can all follow and feel like we can be your co-pilot as you work through it. You would’ve saved yourself some serious dough and headed off TONS of unwarranted online media flack. I’m hoping the cost of the free bumpers is a little reminder that the days of spoonfeeding us what you want us to hear are actually over. Keep making the great products you do and start being up front using the tools that we all use to communicate. No one wants to be the “BP” of computing products when it comes to PR.

Onward.

Second Harvest Food Bank Gets Social

Posted by Rich Harris – June 25, 2010

Second Harvest Food Bank has been around since 1972 and has raised 125 million pounds of food since it began it’s mission. Today, it’s one of the largest charities combating hunger in the continental United States. SHFB for years has always built their network and team members from the ground up, by word of mouth. In this day and age, the tools available for non-profits like SHFB, can build that following 50 times as fast. Sites & tools like Facebook and Twitter are both amazing environments for fostering awareness for charities and spreading the good word of helping others quickly and virally. In Santa Cruz, CA, local business man of 25+ years Danny Keith has recently accepted a spot working for SHFB, providing guidance and a strategy for utilizing today’s social media communication channels to spread the word.

47Project: So who are you and what do you do for Second Harvest Food Bank?

DK: My name is Danny Keith, I founded Grind Out Hunger with Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz County and I am most recently the Development Officer for Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz County.

47Project: How are you using social media to help the SHFB raise awareness?

DK: In my day job the realization of becoming the voice for your brands so your community can drive your message and support or alter it based on how they see your brand. I applied these same principals when I launched http://www.grindouthunger.org and I found that the laws of social apply universally across all aspects. After an extremely successful year with Grind Out Hunger in 2009 and the subsequent traditional and social media it received, I then begin to analyze the existence of of TheFoodBank.org’s website and realized it needed a voice. They already had started a Facebook Fan Page and were using YouTube, Twitter and Vimeo moderately. I came in and syndicated all to cross pollinate each other and create a circle of social. We then branded and begin to implement the push, while bringing the social items directly to the front page of the website. At this point the creation of a WordPress Multi-User platform to set the stage for Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz County to become their own media channel through http://www.thefoodbank.org all while tying in the social activity to tell the story.

47Project: Has it been a challenge trying get online communities to follow SH F B and it’s initiatives? If so, why do you think?

DK: Actually it has been well received, and honestly taken off virally allot quicker than some of my for profit ventures. Non-profits in general are doing such great things at a frequency that creates the need for social even more. Non-profits really are their own best media outlet.

47Project: What have been some of your biggest social media successes so far?

DK: With Second Harvest Food Bank it was the rapid acquisition of fans through our Facebook Fan Page http://www.facebook.com/secondharvestsantacruz from 300 users to over 1000 within 5 weeks.

47Project: What is the end result you are hoping for after all is said and done?

DK: To tell the story loud and proud…Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz County has been on the forefront in the non-profit sector distributing half of its monthly distribution as fresh fruits and vegetables (one of the few food banks in the Nation to lay such claim) while also working with agencies to simplify the processes to get help within the community (On staff WIC and Food Stamp agents help with the process) and educating the recipients of the food around the importance of nutrition. All while servicing over 180 different food distribution agencies within Santa Cruz County. Alarmingly allot of this great work was under exposed mainly due to lack of a social channel to promote it to the community that it services.  Raising money is aˇlways the focus at Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz County, the “ask” is happening differently now. What used to be a mail in donation or a face to face has become electronic, anonymous and instant. My goal is to increase the micro ask (individuals donating $1 to $10) electronically to support the expanding need Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz County is experiencing.

47Project: Are there any SHFB events or announcements you’d like to mention?

DK: Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz County has divided its year in two. 1st half of year is scheduled Food For Children and then second half of the year is Holiday Food Drive. I would just implore people to take a moment and reflect on the hardships others are experiencing, especially around food insecurity. Please donate if you can whether it be food, money or your time…it all makes a difference.

For More Information:

Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz on Facebook

GrindOutHunger.org

FeedingAmerica.org

Fatherhood

Posted by Rich Harris – June 20, 2010

I can’t think of a bigger honor for a man than that of the opportunity to be a father.

The honor of being a father is filled with the most extreme rewards and challenges. Before you are a parent and are in the stage of thinking about being one, you are concentrating on all the joys and trials that are written about in parenting magazines, books, and articles. You are juggling all the scenarios of love and strain that you’ve witnessed with other family members or close friends that have kids when you are visiting each other. You have a list of ideals you hold onto based on how you were raised and all the things you plan on instilling in your children, or not instilling in them.

When they enter the world though, something starts to happen that we fathers aren’t prepared for. It’s the biggest gift that my boys have given me thus far. It’s a gift that can’t be taught in a class, written in a book, or learned and prospered from by any other means than to actually experience it for yourself.

Raising my 3 boys has taught me what unconditional love really is. During my time as a father I’ve been not only blessed with the opportunity to raise my sons to be humble, respectful men, but also to have these 3 young people in my life that love me in a way that no one other than God could. That is something that continues to blow my mind, break down emotional struggles from my own childhood, and allow me the opportunity to reconstruct who I am as a man from the ground up, the opportunity to aspire to be at least close to what I know they are gonna be. No advice, counselor, good friend, or other family member could do that for me like my own sons have. For that I’m eternally grateful and humbled. I love you Simon, Ethan and Liam and look forward to a long life with you guys.

Happy Father’s Day to all you involved fathers, stepfathers, grandfathers and anyone else that has stepped up to the plate to take a father figure role in someone’s life. You have one of the most rewarding jobs on the planet. Your impact on future generations is huge.

Onward.

Humanize Your Business Or Fail

Posted by Rich Harris – June 16, 2010

The old school of thought, because historically consumers were so easily wow’d by bright colors and one-way marketing messages, is that the top priority of  your marketing efforts should revolve around your products or services, what they do, what it’s gonna cost them, and why you are the best choice over your competitors and their products or services……oh yeah, and how rad your logo is.

Because profitability for any business comes from human beings making the decision to invest in you or your company, I believe that the old school is now officially backwards and can almost be hurtful to your cause. In the last year or so, the concept unearthed, thanks in large part by the social aspect of the web, is that companies need to spend more time using their market research and user group studies to construct a strategy around presenting their offering as an integral part of someone’s life, rather than as a “great product or service at a great price.”  The “Hey look at me! Look at me!” syndrome that so many companies and business people fall into when they don’t know what else to do with their time and budgets and feel like nothing else was working, is no bueno.

Like It Or Not, Warm Fuzzies = Revenue

I’m not saying the quality of the products or services aren’t a priority. Hell, they have to be if they’re are to successfully become a part of someone’s life, solidifying their purchase decision to make that initial investment in their relationship with you, ensure customer loyalty and retention, and increase the frequency of word of mouth (now more valuable than ever). I’m just saying that assuming quality is already there, the next step is to make sure you are a part of your customer, not just someone they handed over money to for products or services.

If you want to know what I’m talking about, just watch Apple. Love them or hate them, Apple knows how to create the notion that their technology products are seamlessly already part of who you are as a person. The concept of the iPad, and the iPad itself, is a perfect example. It doesn’t matter if you are selling car insurance, lamp shades, financial advice or skateboards, make sure that the presentation layer of your marketing plan does the following:

  • Think about a meaningful situation or experience that is most common among your market segment.
  • Assess which vehicle (YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, blogs) they use most to consume information about your product/service type.
  • Storyboard a campaign that revolves around said meaningful situation/experience.
  • Keep your product (and even sometimes your brand in certain cases) as a background focus of your campaign, the whole time.

The above is how I would handle marketing/campaign methodology in this day and age. Catering to people’s emotions is nothing new in Marketing. Catering to segmented human emotion in a way where they can also interact with you and quickly, followed by easily doing business with you immediately, is new, thanks to the technology and tools. Pull your weight in the relationship with your customer and they’ll stick it out with you, even when your industry or company hit some rough spots.

Onward.

True Philanthropy

Posted by Rich Harris – June 11, 2010

Call it Karma. Call it energy. Call it fellowship. Call it being nice. Call it service. Whatever you call it, I believe that you get what you give in this life. I believe this as it is evident in the opportunities I’ve been given to help others. True philanthropy is not tied to a religion, specific society or culture. It’s not being a hippie living in a close-minded liberal soup of laziness and bullshit and denial. Giving does not have a party affiliation with any demographic or way of life.

Check Your Motivation

True philanthropy only comes from helping others for the sake of helping others, with no internal quest for personal credit, no expectation of social capital gain amongst your peers. I believe that the credit you “expect” to get for helping others is equal to the amount of credit you don’t deserve, on the mere premise that an expectation exists on your behalf.

If your philanthropic work brings you personal monetary gain, directly or intrinsically, and instead of said monetary gain being 100% passed onto another charitable cause or effort, then you have poisoned the well. I would go as far as saying that you are not truly aligned with the purity of “real” philanthropy.

Lastly, helping others out of guilt is not philanthropy as you are only helping to pacify and feed your own demons. This is still “taking.”

A great quote I heard in a very cheesy action movie once was, “A true philanthropist will never put themself in a position where they are taking or personally gaining from those around them.” [Paraphrased]

Little Efforts Make Big Waves

Every day, somewhere, sometime, somehow, there are miniscule opportunities to make a difference in someone’s life, which inturn makes a difference in the lives of others, almost immediately. Little opportunities like these can create a real chain reaction that, while you may never physically see the full result, I guarantee happens on some level, at some percentage. Whether it brightens up someone’s shitty weekday morning, taking that edge off of their workday, or pushes someone else back a few feet from the proverbial edge they may have been on after a slough of things that have gone wrong lately in their life, a menial and quick selfless act on your part can really help tip the scales in a positive direction.

Here are some of the types of things even the busiest people in the universe can carve out time for, supporting a positive paradigm shift in humanity:

1. Offer to buy a stranger a cup of coffee in the morning.

2. Ask or call someone you know randomly and ask them how they are doing and then just listen and validate what they are saying.

3. Anonymously donate $5 to a charity of your choice.

4. Volunteer one hour of your time at a retirement center, home or hospice enviroment and keep an elderly person company for a little bit. Those places are lonely and dismal and our country tends to treat seniors as an annoyance as opposed to respected elders in our communities. It’s a shame.

5. Sponsor a low income or disadvantaged family one holiday season. You’d be surprised what $5 in cheap or donated toys does for a child’s spirit when times are tough. That spirit is contagious enough to lighten even the darkest of households.

We Are All The Same (Still)

There is an energy that exudes from humans every day across the globe, an energy that is constantly trying to synergize and be compatible with itself so that we can all just “get along.” I think in some cases we’ve become so fearful and complacent with one another that our personal insecurities have gotten the best of us. This fear and complacence has gotten us to the point where only physical co-existence is becoming the new “getting along.” What a bummer.

I do believe though that there is more hope in small doses than we are ambitious enough to acknowledge, small things that we, over time, inadvertently take for granted thanks to a perpetually imbalanced “work culture” that drives us full speed on the road to nowhere.

I encourage everyone to randomly and anonymously do something nice for one or more people every once in awhile. It’s easy, cheap, and will start to change you from the inside in a way that, if you aren’t used to it, will surprise you, shock you, make you uncomfortable if you aren’t used to feeling vulnerable, and will possibly break you down in a constructive way emotionally that only a few people have been strong enough to accept and experience….and those that have, see the world differently than most of us.

Onward.

Like A Population of Over-Stimulated Newborns

Posted by Rich Harris – June 10, 2010

Recently, a friend of mine, Bill Pennington (@blazing_b on Twitter) shared an amazing reminder of an article called “The No. 1 Habit of Highly Creative People.” I really got to thinking a lot about this, and all the really creative people I know that have been successful in flourishing within the confines of their right-brain (the more complex, amorphous and sometimes torrential, side of our intellect – my opinion of course).

Our Culture

The average American adult spends 8 1/2 hours a day staring into screens. We have gotten down on our knees and ripped the faucet off the water main of information with mouths and hands wide open. By majority, we are a culture of people in a constant state of waiting for the next thing to do, the next thing to react to, to eat, to drink, to socialize, to attend, to take care of, to engage on whatever level enough to prompt us to feel like we know what we’re supposed to do next while we are awake. I truly believe it’s NOT human nature that we are control freaks with how much idle time we allow. I believe we are taught by our environment how to, and why we should limit our solitude, deviate from it, stay misinformed on how to leverage it for personal growth. We do this out of fear. To us I think deep down we know that solitude is the ultimate place of vulnerability, where we are forced to face the truth, ourselves, with no distraction, and it’s uncomfortable.

I think our full tilt culture lacks balance in a way that creates more unnecessary stress, turmoil, and bad decision-making than we give it credit for. We are feeding our brains a TON of info without allowing them enough time to process what we’re taking in, apply it to our psyche the way it’s meant to be physiologically and emotionally applied, and then purge the excess “noise” from our short-term memories so that we can move onto the next thing.

Our Brains

The Similarity Between Mental & Physical Process

The average American eats about 1,800 pounds of food per year, or about five pounds per day.

Our brains are the digestive systems of information. Our actual digestive systems are a process, a series of required steps to do their job correctly, only beneficial if all steps are allowed to happen. Just like when we consume food and beverages, we chew it, swallow it, digest it – methodically processing and getting all required nutrients where possible and then disposing of the unnecessary.

Now if, relatively speaking of course, we ate 100 times the amount of food we normally do, for one day (500 pounds vs. 5 pounds), but only allowing our bodies to only process and dispose of it at the same frequency we do on an average day when we ate only 5 pounds of food, what would happen? Would our body adjust and allow more throughput to accomodate the massive increase in regular input (food)? Would our stomach eventually learn to produce a 100 times more acid to break down food faster? Would our intestines eventually adjust, able to work 100 times harder to absorb nutrients? Would our bodies eventually be able exploit and take advantage of 100 times the intake of vitamins from those nutrients? Would we be able to eventually expel 100 times more waste after processing? I know that’s a little graphic but you get my point.

My Answer: Hell NO it wouldn’t.

Our bodies would shut down. Heart attacks, strokes, bursting organs, and aneurisms would dominate the mortality charts of the U.S. Department of Health within 48 hours. The reason for this is that our bodies are designed for a certain amount of input within a range, a range whose boundaries guarantee the survival of our species. It is to this point, I believe that our brains have their own set of limitations as well when it comes to input. The Information Age has really put humanity’s processing power to the test. [I went into more detail on my opinion about this test in this post.]

Our Capacity for Input, The Natural Limitations

SMS, Facebook, IM, Email, RSS, Breaking News from 100 sources at within seconds via web, smartphone, and now iPads and other tablet computers, is now becoming a normal way of life. To boot, that is all information that blasts us in the side of the skull OUTSIDE the face-to-face part of our daily lives (raising children, having significant others, working in an office with other professionals, talking to friends, doing dishes and laundry, et al.).

I do believe that we’ve been able to adjust quite well to the amount of information now instantly available via computer and phone. But I still think that we have limits that we are inadvertently overlooking. The implementation of boundaries supporting these limitations is our responsibility and is only possible with balance.

Solitude & Balance

The sister post to the one about Creativity on ZenHabits.net was called “The Lost Art of Solitude.“ What an amazing post this was. And until I applied it to my life over the last year or so, I had no idea how important this was for our daily existence.

I’m a single dad with 3 sons that I have half the week. I have a challenging and busy (sometimes more than full time) corporate job that I spend at least 45-50 hours a week on, sometimes more depending on what’s going on, and I’m in a band (95% fun, 5% work). Whether it’s fun or work, it’s all activity, input requiring a response or some tending to from me.

When I started carving out one day a week for solitude, it was a dramatic visceral experience at first. I equate it with me freeing up a traffic jam of information, a gridlock made of of millions of cars filled with frustrated drivers and passengers waiting to get through to reach their final destination. When I allowed myself to be alone for a day, letting some of these proverbial cars through, I was not only able to start processing what I had experienced during the week, I was also freeing up issues and thoughts, good and bad, in my brain that had been buried for a LONG time, issues that were long overdue for some TLC.

I found that the most significant shifts in development as a person, both personally and professionally, happen when I’m alone, giving myself some time to process life’s input. I end up more inspired, more grounded, more clear-headed, more patient, and more thoughtful in everything I do, even if I just give myself one day, or even one evening a week.

I highly recommend to anyone that they schedule some time for themselves if they don’t already. I don’t believe people should always be alone and not socialize. Just make sure to balance them. The better you balance socializing and solitude, the more you’ll get out of both.

Onward.

[image borrowed humbly from distractible.org]

Social Media: The Agriculture & Farming Industry

Posted by Rich Harris – June 2, 2010

Jeff Fowle (@JeffFowle on Twitter) and I met at a Twitter conference in Seattle back in early March of this year. He’s a mellow dude and one of the nicest guys I’ve met in a long time. He’s a farmer, Agvocate, family man and a social media guy. After chatting with him in Seattle, I was interested in knowing more about how an industry as organic as his could proliferate an era as digital as the current one. Jeff has been instrumental in doing just that.

I think his bio says it all: “Jeff Fowle is a third generation family farmer and rancher from Etna, California. He and his wife Erin and son Kyle raise registered Angus cattle, Percheron draft horses, warmbloods, alfalfa and alfalfa-grass hay and grain as a rotation. They also start and train horses for riding, jumping, and driving. Their family run ranch has incorporated many environmentally beneficial and water efficient technologies and management strategies.”

NOTE: Jeff was also the Twitterer of the week on last week’s episode of The Quick’n'Dirty Podcast. You can listen to the episode or read the recap.

Here’s the quick interview we did over email.

So who are you and what do you do?

I’m a 4th generation rancher & farmer, raising the 5th. We raise Angus and Hereford cattle, Percheron Draft horses, Warmbloods, Thoroughbreds, Quarterhorses, alfalfa hay, wheat & pasture.

Jeff, you and I met at 140tc in Seattle and your good friend Ray Prock (@RayLinDairy on Twitter) was explaining to me some of the complexities of farming. I had no idea. Do you get the sense that most consumers don’t know much about where their food comes from and how it got onto their dinner table?

Over 90% of Americans are at least 2 generations removed from the farm or ranch. This generational gap presents a situation where the average person no longer understands what is involved in order to get that food to their table, let alone a clear idea of where it came from.

What is the most common misconception about the farming industry and those that work in it?

I think the most common misconception is that “farmers don’t care.” Main stream media carries a few negative stories and assumption by the public is that “all of ag” is like that. Reality is that farmers & ranchers are great stewards of the land and livestock. It is in our best interest to keep the land healthy & productive for future generations and diverse wildlife. Also, livestock that is low stress & happy is healthier and produces more consistently.

How are you using social media to help the farming industry? Educational? Marketing?

I’m using SM for several purposes.

  1. To reach out to people who have questions about where their food comes from & how it is produced.
  2. Address mis-information being spread by those opposing agriculture.
  3. Learn what the perceptions are by the public.
  4. Learn from fellow producers across the country.
  5. Market my own products.

Has it been a challenge trying get the farming community to learn, use, and embrace tools like Twitter and Facebook?

The biggest challenge is overcoming the technology issues. Many farmers & ranchers are still on dial-up which makes most SM applications a challenge.  For those who do have access, its a matter of building confidence & helping them realize that there are folks who are interested in their story and learning how, what and why they do what they do.

What is Agvocacy and what is it about?

Agvocacy is simply the act of promoting agriculture. I believe that we need all types of production in order to meet the future needs of the people. Conventional, organic, natural, farmers markets all will play an important role in continuing to provide safe, wholesome and healthy food for future generations.

What kinds of changes have you seen in the farming industry’s communication culture since you started your social media push?

The biggest learning curve has been in relating to people. Due to mis-information and incorrect assumptions, many people have formed opinions about what we do. We must first listen to their concerns and understand why they believe what they do. Once we understand their perspective we can then discuss their questions rationally and eliminate or at least reduce the likelihood of a confrontation occurring. It is paramount to remain professional and civil in all conversations. Farmers and ranchers have become very cautious and almost numb to attacks, so this is a sign of progress, being able to engage with the public, share the story and have mutual respect.

Any events or announcements you’d like to mention?

The AgChat Foundation will be having some announcements of upcoming events in the next couple of weeks. They will be announced on Twitter, Facebook & also on our website agchat.org.



Leech Marketing: Stop The Algorithmic Madness

Posted by Rich Harris – May 31, 2010

Like most social media peeps, I sit around all day and watch Twitter as a part of my job. I watch several keyword/phrase streams like everyone else, to keep my thumb on the pulse of the business, various industries, market segments and influencers. Lately I’ve been surprised (and a little dissappointed) to see what some of the fairly notable and medium to large companies have been doing, some of which are publicly traded. I’ve covered this and similar observations in a recent rant “Twitter Auto-DM’s: Perpetuating Our Inner Lemming?” which more of a Twitter-specific bitchfest but still lends itself to a bigger issue I’m seeing that is not platform, industry, or era-specific. I don’t think this issue will ever really go away because there will always be a layer of misguided marketers and businesses doing things that are just lame, hoping to capitalize on customers that haven’t been trained to think for themselves as consumers (yet).

In this world there are three types of people:

  1. Givers
  2. Takers
  3. Those that know the importance of balancing being both.

In business it’s no different.

What is Leech Marketing?

In the social media/web world, to me leech marketing is basically the effort behind leveraging search algorithms to make quick money from uninformed customers with no concern for the real long-tail value of one’s business or industry. The unfortunate effect of this behavior is that it brings down the social capital value of those businesses that are doing social the right way for the right reasons. So to explain what the hell I’m really talking about here, these are a few (of many) leech methods, sucking the value out of social media by muddying the waters of our intended target audiences.

Irrelevant Hashtagging

This definitely can make trying to do business on Twitter (the right way) more time consuming as you watch keyword/phrase streams, trying to follow current market segment-specific conversations as well as unearthing new potential markets. People are hashtagging business-related tweets by top ten Twitter trending topics rather than relevancy to one’s target audience in an effort expose a ‘conversation’ to new randoms, more shotgunning.

Unfortunately (and statistically) your ROI will not only suck, but you are actually hurting other businesses that aren’t even in your space. This will NOT give you a competitive edge and additionally makes you (personal brand) or your company look desperate and clueless. You want to be the company that looks like you are smarter and wiser than everyone else, that you’ve risen above it all, focusing on what’s really important. Here’s what I’m talking about.

Examples:

Say you want to sell your Canon point-and-shoot camera on Craigslist……

  • Good: “Selling my point-and-shoot camera. DM me if interested. LINKTOCRAIGSLISTPOST #photography #pointandshoot #photographer #forsale”
  • Bad: “Selling my point-and-shoot camera. DM me if interested. LINKTOCRAIGSLISTPOST #socialmedia #justinbieber #oilspill”

Irrelevant Categorizing/Tagging of Blog Posts is Clutter

Similar to tweet construction, categorizing/tagging blog posts is an art. It’s probably safe to say that since search engines give preference to blogs, I believe that category/tag spam and it’s content irrelevance is responsible for probably a surprising percentage of lost business, wasted bandwidth, wasted time, and overall confusion for customers.

I understand that one way to help proliferate or unearth new customers and markets is to tag posts with keywords/phrases with ‘somewhat relevant’ tags. I think that’s all smart and good, but tagging anything “Justin Bieber” alongside anything other than what’s relevant is what I’m against.

Let’s take the same concept, selling a used Canon point-and-shoot camera on Craigslist, except this time, you write a blog post about it with info about the camera and then linking to your Craigslist entry.

Examples:

  • Good Tagging: “For sale, camera, canon, point and shoot, photography, photographer, used camera, craigslist, beginner camera”
  • Bad Tagging: “canon, camera, photography, oil spill, bp gas, justin bieber, lost, social media”

Above I’m not saying it’s “bad” because it won’t work, however I am saying that you are creating more clutter for the rest of us and hurting online business flow by doing it. This method of tagging reduces the value of search and other social media tools for the business and personal web experience.

Search rankings don’t mean squat without a real conversion that supports the business objective(s).

“Mannequin” Blog Posts, Keyword-Based Post Aggregators – Automated or Manual

A “mannequin” blog post basically consists of the first paragraph or so of an original post, plus the link to the source so you can link back to it. I’m not opposed to this at all as long as the mannequin’d post is relevant to your business/brand and if it only makes up a fairly miniscule portion of your content. Those that have set up websites that in a scripted fashion crawl every blog post with a certain brand name, product type, specific industry keywords/phrases, then in a scripted fashion duplicate the post, creating a blog post and publishing it, is not only wrong for search/business clutter reasons, it’s also one of the many ways the companies sell their soul if that website or process is a documented part of their business plan. It’s weak and not a good foundation for your brand….my opinion of course.

Blind Following, Friending, Liking, Retweeting

Doing any of the above without researching the person/website first to make sure it’s relevant and has intrinsic value to your business and it’s objectives is just dumb. Plain and simple.

Common Sense

On the web, especially nowadays, people and content are data points, data points whose connection and strength lies solely in their relevance. The less relevant, the less valuable. The less valuable, the bigger the reason you shouldn’t do it, but you already know that. :-) Here’s a few other good articles on this stuff. Some old, some new.

How not to use Twitter: HabitatUK as a case study
Why Hashtag Hijacking Is Bad for Everyone
Onward.

Your Social Media Stereo EQ

Posted by Rich Harris – April 29, 2010

The Conversation

I have to credit a tweet from Adam Cohen (@AdamCohen on Twitter, His blog: http://adamhcohen.com/) as the genesis for this post. He was attending the Social Business Summit 2010 in Austin I believe (assumed based on his hashtag). While attending a keynote/panel of some sort he had said the following:

@adamcohen “Social applies in product dev, marketing, sales, customer svc, lines of business, Ops/IT/back office, but some more than others #sbs2010″

I then responded with:

@47project: “@adamcohen Yep…like adjusting a stereo EQ for business, depending on the business needs.”

I just kinda said it quickly without fully visualizing it and then moved on but I started to really think about it and, maybe because I’ve been a musician all my life, the above image immediately materialized in my noggin. So I exercised some of my below average Photoshop skills to demonstrate how I believe social marketers that deal with medium to large companies need to approach social media.

Silver Bullets

I kind of mentioned this in my last post “A Couple Social Media Observations“, yammering on about werewolves and such. In the same way that there is no silver bullet measuring tool for social media, no silver bullet platform or website that would perfectly serve every customer or market segment for every type or size of company, NOR is there a silver bullet approach or equation as to what tools you should use, in what combination, and to what extent, for your engagement efforts. You can only make an educated guess based on some initial critieria/research.

Everything you do in social media is a combination, an equation full of multiple variables that need tweaking every month, tweaking that is influenced by ongoing metric/data collection and analysis (obviously). While you may eventually find that yes, Twitter is the best tool for that campaign or LinkedIn is the best solution for this initiative, you should never go into it initially with some preconceived notion of what THE best anything is, honestly…

One of the main reasons why so many seasoned professionals struggle so much with the assessment of social media and it’s value or place is that it’s natural state is fairly amorphous because you are dealing with humans. Social media has finally helped translate the gray area in business into something valuable and palpable with the interwebs and all the popular tools. Now it’s up to us to embrace it for what it is.

The Art of Fine Tuning

Even though there is no, and will probably never be, a piece of rack-mounted hardware like the one I created above where you can just simply turn a dial to crank up the Twitter juice for PR, or turn down the Facebook juice in sales, by now you understand the approach I’m talking about. If you run into any blog posts where someone is trying to get the readers to pigeon hole their efforts into one particular app, website or tool, I recommend you move on.

Social media is an ocean full of wildlife and ever changing temperatures and currents, and extreme weather conditions. While you are at the helm of your ship, equipped with senstive navigational instruments (Insights, Radian6, web analytics) to make your way through everything, you know it makes no sense to just set all of them to one setting and “hope it all works out”. You need to make adjustments along the way based on all kinds of changing variables, sometimes frequently. Social media is no different.

Onward.

A Couple Social Media Observations

Posted by Rich Harris – April 28, 2010

This post might come off as a little bitchy but it’s not intended to be that way. Nor is it intended to make me sound like I know everything, because I absolutely do not. I’ve just been spending a lot of time watching the behavior of the SM streams, the waves of info that continue to flush and wipe away that other trending topic that just happened 60 seconds ago.

Apples vs. Oranges

Twitter vs. Facebook, Facebook vs. LinkedIn, Twitter vs. Mr. Coffee. Everyone is trying too hard to pigeon-hole the social media approach, and which tool is THE “best”, instead of focusing on the fluid open-minded nature of using social to meet your overall objective(s). Please stop.

Social media is a gigantic toolbox full of applications, sites, approaches, and mindsets. All, none, or some of which can be used individually or in combination to varying degrees depending on what you want to accomplish. There are no werewolves in the social media landscape so there’s no demand for a silver bullet. Kapeesh? If you somehow find that silver bullet, let me know so I can make millions in nanoseconds and retire.

Don’t Drink Anyone’s Kool-Aid. Make Your Own.

I’m on RT overload right now. I’m all about sharing. Sharing is caring. I’ve learned a lot from content that I share with others, lots of content that was not created by me. It’s a big part of the info dissemination unicorn that makes social media tools and the information age great for business, people and content in general.

However…….I think the current ratio of forwarded content to original content is WAYYY out of whack. I would like to see a little less retweets/forwards/shares and more original blog posts/content from more brilliant people. I also think that while we are all learning and constantly fine-tuning our own voice, make sure that it is your top priority if you are a social marketer to not just augment useful things that others are saying, but more importantly, come up with some new concepts and opinions that you haven’t seen published yet. We need more Brogans, more Solis’, more Godins.

I know you are out there, don’t be afraid to take the “individual unique thought-leader content creation” leap alongside those that you look up to. You MIGHT be short-changing yourself and your potential if you don’t at least explore it.

Onward.