Mentalytics

You can’t help but think about identity management when creating content online – It’s arguably the primary driver behind much of the content that’s created in the first place.  After all every comment, blog entry, video, picture, or status update conveys some degree of information about the person who created it.  Furthermore, the creator of the content is in many ways completely free to depart from reality in the way he provides information about himself.   But even within the context of that content you get a wide variety of styles of identity management, ranging from cluttered and irresponsible to consistent, focused and calculated.

It has been said that when is comes to writing an essay, every paragraph, even every sentence must contribute to proving the main point.  When reading an essay or listening to a speech it is quickly evident if the author lacks focus.  Irrelevant points are brought in that distract from, and usually even detract from the main point.  When I hear a speech like this I think to myself, “What’s the point?”  A focused essay, on the other hand, is consistent and directed in its message.  Evey sentence, every example, every bit of analysis can be traced back to the main point being proven.  Examples that point in other directions are left out or reframed to support the overarching theme.

I’m starting to think of identity management in similar terms.  I recently did a Google search for Mitch Joel, author of Six Pixels of Separation, and all I could think as I browsed the results was, “This guy really knows social media.”  Even as I was learning about other endeavors he is engaged in, it all pointed to the same place.

I’m sure some of this is intentional, some of it natural.  After all what would you expect to find on someone who is in fact extremely focused?

But the real lesson here is that someone who is trying to establish an identity needs to eliminate the clutter, eliminate the distractions, and focus the content they are building around the identity they are building.

So…

I went to IU’s first annual iPhone Developer Conference today.  I saw that there were going to be some empty seats and then I basically got a personal invitation from the staff to come on in (”Who is going to eat these 37 leftover ham sandwiches?”).  I couldn’t refuse.

The conference was hashed on Twitter (#IUiPhone) and very well documented on Google Wave (with:public IUiPhone), due in large part to @rec54 and @kmakice respectively – Thanks!  Without trying to duplicate what has already been recorded, here are some key quotes from what I would characterize as a set of enthusiastic, insightful sessions…

Steve Hayman

National Consulting Engineer for Apple’s US Education Sales group, trombone enthusiast

From his keynote speech:

There are so many ways to wrap up public data and make it look nice…  If you are already an HTML and JavaScript programmer, creating a web application for the iPhone should seem very familiar.

A key advantage of web apps over native apps is that you get them up quickly and deploy them without any hassle.

I cannot recommend the Stanford iPhone programming course strongly enough.

August Trometer

Co-founder and Lead Developer, Yowza!!

On the evolution of an iPhone app:

How to become a millionaire iPhone developer:  First, get a million dollars.  Then, develop an iPhone app.

The goldrush, the easy money, is over.  Get over it.  Now you need a great product that sets itself apart.

Apple has set the bar very high with their own design standards.  Try to beat them at their own game!  If you are successful, they will notice you.

You should spend 50% of your time on design, 35% on coding, and 15% on testing and debugging.

The new interaction metaphor is the finger. . . Now you can touch your data, interact with it.  The finger is not a mouse!  It’s 55 x 55 pixels, not 1 x 1.  All design considerations must take this into account.

Use real-world metaphors in your design. . . A reader app that swipes like a real page, a tip calculator that mimics the bill you see.

Know the rules.  Read the HIG (Human interface guidelines) over and over!  If you don’t, the app will get rejected.

Focus on user-centered design.  Figure out the easiest way for users to complete the most common tasks.

Paper is cheap.  Prototype your ideas out on paper over and over again.  Sketch every screen, every interaction.  Sketch at the size of the iPhone and it will force you to make the app finger-safe.

When Apple reviews your app it will be rejected, and that’s a good thing.  They go to the shadowy corners of your app to flush out bugs.

You should always be embarrassed by your 1.0 version.  Don’t be afraid of lameness, just get developing.

I’ve downloaded over a thousand apps.  I look at them for inspiration, particularly the shiny, graphically superior ones.

Apple has sold over 50 million iPhones and iPods Touch combined.  If you write an app that’s useful for you then somebody, somewhere, in some niche will also find it useful.

Marie Kerbeshian

Vice President, IU Research & Technology Corporation

On copyrights, patents, and IU’s intellectual property policy:

If you are using university resources and you invent something patentable, it belongs to the university.

Copyright exists the moment you create something in a tangible medium.

It’s the person who solves the problem, not the person who identifies the problem, that gets the rights.

Overall the conference was well put together and well attended (over 200 people!).  Among the attendees were programmers, designers, administrators, students, faculty, and others, and I haven’t met a person yet that wasn’t pleased with the experience.

In fact I’m starting to wish I was notified any time there were 37 leftover ham sandwiches waiting to be eaten somewhere on campus.

. . . Maybe there’s an app for that.

Still thinking about the ladder from Groundswell.

A huge obstacle to many companies right now is that their customers are higher on the ladder than they are.  I can count on one hand the number of non-tech marketing managers I’ve met that fall above the “joiners” rung on the ladder, and most are spectators or inactives.  How should a business school market itself to prospective students and interact with its current ones?  How can a consumer durables manufacturer penetrate a ripe college market in its own hometown?  Generally, how does a manager who sits low on the social technographic ladder figure out how to engage a socially tech-savvy demographic?

Much of the difficulty stems from the fact that many managers don’t yet believe that this flavor of engagement is even necessary.  This is changing and will continue to change, especially as success stories across a variety of industries become more widespread and more public.  So in a sense there are two separate issues:  First, how do you convince someone that they need to move up the ladder, and second, how do you help them actually do it.

As far as convincing is concerned, it must first be noted that not everyone can be convinced.  But a key step in the right direction is to figure out a person’s motivations and incentives and go from there.  Does Joe Unbeliever really think there’s no utility to blogging?  Or does he just not care because it doesn’t affect him?

If it’s a utility issue, there are ways to handle it.

The vast majority of organizations outside Silicon Valley are staggeringly inept at projecting what they see and hear about social media onto their own strategies and tactics. As a result, many managers and other employees within the organizations just don’t see the point of doing it.  The antidote to this type of thinking is to present the utility and the doability of a social media strategy in real, quantifiable terms.  Sales.  Reach.  Return on Marketing Investment.  New customers acquired.

What if you are dealing with a person who not only doesn’t see the point, he also isn’t even evaluated based on those metrics?  Just remember that people can be motivated in a variety of ways, not all of which are obvious.  Consider such desires as acceptance, curiosity, honor, independence, power, social contact, status, safety.

Assuming for a moment that we are at the point where we have a person or group that is ready and willing to start moving up, what happens next?  Some of it can happen more naturally because it is easy to do.  Posting a quick comment on a picture or video is a fairly easy way to enter the conversation.  Other levels of engagement can be more taxing.  How do you get somebody to blog?  Anyone that has tried to coach a prospective blogger into becoming an actual blogger knows that people don’t always just jump up and do it.  In fact they hardly ever do, even when they actually kind of want to.

How do you coach yourself or someone else from standstill to creativity?

That’s an entry for next time.

A lot of people think Twitter is stupid.  I used to, and actually sometimes I still do.  But really, it’s not so much Twitter that’s useless, so much as the way people use it sometimes (myself included!).  It may be largely due to tweets like these.  But if I listened to my 14-year-old self talking on the phone I’d think the phone was useless too.  The beauty of the platform is that it can be used for just about anything, ranging from world-event-shaping to mundane.  Here are 5 twitter users to follow if you feel like you still “just don’t get it” :

@guykawasaki

He’s a famous entrepreneur and founded Alltop.com, which aggregates content in a way that the most useful or interesting rises to the top.  His tweets usually send you back to Alltop.com and range from useful marketing tips to random interesting content.

@lindseypollak

She wrote the book “Getting from College to Career” and is excellent to follow if you are a college student or graduate trying to get a job.

@digg_2000

People surf the internet, find content (pictures, video, etc.) they like, and “digg” the content, i.e., vote for it.  When a piece of content reaches 2,000 “diggs”, it automatically gets broadcast by this account.  The content is sometimes useful but usually just interesting, humorous, or otherwise entertaining.

@techcrunch

This is the twitter feed of the TechCrunch Blog, one of the preeminent resources on the web for breaking technology news and opinions.

@badbanana

This is Tim Siedell, a brand communications director from Nebraska.  The tweets are rarely useful, always funny.  Think Jack Handey’s Deep Thoughts plus a web strategy.

I just read Groundswell, by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff.  The book reads as a tactician’s guide to succeeding as a business in the world of social media.  One of the most useful and insightful gems from the book is the Social Technographics ladder.

Creators

Creators publish blogs, publish their own webpages, upload their own videos and music, and write and post their own stories.

Critics

Critics post ratings and reviews, they comment on blogs and other websites, they contribute to online forums, and they contribute to and edit wiki articles.

Collectors

Collectors use RSS feeds, add tags to web pages or photos, and “vote” for sites online.

Joiners

Joiners visit and maintain profiles on social networking sites.

Spectators

Spectators Read blogs, watch video other users have uploaded, listen to podcasts, read online forums, and read customer ratings and reviews.

Inactives

Inactives do nothing.  It’s not that they don’t use the internet, it’s just that they don’t participate in its social components.

The marketer’s challenge

The process of engaging people in online spheres is a multi-step process.  The first step is to figure out where on the ladder your customers fit, and the second step is to devise a strategy to engage them in that spot.  For example, if your customers are primarily spectators, attempting to get them to blog or post videos about you will likely be difficult.  If your customers are primarily critics, a successful strategy could likely be built that incorporates reviews and other participation.

I’m starting to think more and more that the power of a tweet or other piece of content can be distilled down to just a few basic parameters.  The two that stick out to me most are utility and entertainment value, though there are sure to be others.  Just sticking to these two for now, take a few examples on Twitter:

@badbanana

This guy seems more like Jack Handey (of Deep Thoughts fame) than the creative director of a Nebraska communications studio:

I didn’t have to chew my leg off to get out of that boring meeting, but doing so certainly sent a strong message.

Utility:  Somewhere near 1/10.

Entertainment: 8/10.

@guykawasaki

Famous internet entrepreneur, founder of Alltop.  A couple of sample tweets:

How to get the most marketing bang out of your next event http://om.ly/bXdm

Reverse graffiti artist http://om.ly/bXbw

Utility: 8/10.

Entertainment: 7/10.

@twitter_tips

Tips, tools, and status.  A running twitter bible, basically:

The lists you are on “tag” you…& make people search better: http://j.mp/1cjOgA –Share: http://bit.ly/1J1hmZ

Utility:  9/10.

Entertainment:  3/10.

So let’s plot this all out…

These strategies are different from each other and each works well to meet the specific goals toward which it is oriented.  What’s common among all three is that they engage by giving, by adding interest and value.  A marketer contemplating social media strategies would do well to consider potential content within this framework.  If it falls in the bottom left corner, it’s probably time to rethink the content.

12seconds.tv can be best described as the video version of Twitter.  You have 12 seconds to describe what you’re doing, or, say, demonstrate how to open a pistachio nut by running over it with a car.

What’s it good for?

Quick, witty videos.  Have you ever noticed that the crux of many popular YouTube videos lasts only a couple of seconds, while the surrounding three minutes is extremely boring?  Well, in this respect, 12 seconds is a huge improvement for certain types of video.  You cut straight to the important part.  Also, just like everything these days, it will link to Twitter and Facebook.

Who could use it?

There are some interesting possibilities here.  First, it’s an interesting tool in the context of identity management.  You could give your blog, website, and twitter feed all a professional slant, while reserving your 12Seconds channel for interesting personal content.  A few unobtrusive links between the two would allow followers in one network the chance to see your personal side without it being broadcast on the exact same wavelength as your professional communications.  The platform is rather appropriate for the context – While it might take me an entire blog entry to describe an analytics package or a business tool, I can’t imagine needing any more than 12 seconds of video to convey the idea that I built a bonfire in my backyard that was visible from space.

Secondly, 12Seconds has some interesting implications as a method of driving traffic.  If a 12 second video can be made to generate enough interest to stimulate a user to click through to a product site, a blog, or just another piece of content that continues to engage, that little clip is doing its job.

What are its Downsides?

Well, first of all, it’s in Beta, so in some ways it is too simple.  For example, the video upload section states, “We accept many common file types”, while all I have been able to upload so far are WMVs and MOVs.

Second, you only have 12 seconds.  So Total Eclipse of the Heart will just have to stay on YouTube for now.  There are just certain types of content that you can’t develop much in 12 seconds.  While you might be able to answer the question “Will it Blend?” in 12 seconds, you probably can’t really develop much of an answer for “How do I build a website?”.  As a case in point, my fist attempt at using the platform was to try to string together some clips to show how I made rice krispy treats with my kids a few days ago.  I will only say that it was fragmented beyond all hope.

Final Thoughts

The key takeaway on using 12Seconds is this:  If something is the size of a chocolate chip, it’s not useful to make it taste like 17 different things.  Short, sweet, and focused is the name of the game.

In a year of stalking and writing love notes to corporate MBA recruiters, I have ended up doing quite a bit of background research on various companies.  Two of my favorites are Danaher and 3M.  These are multi-billion dollar industrial conglomerates that build a lot of stuff we know about (Danaher makes Craftsman tools, for example, and 3M makes Post-it Notes), along with even more stuff we’ve never heard of but can’t live without (industrial water purification and airplane wing tape, for example).  The two companies are different in the way they approach product development, and comparing the two  makes for an interesting discussion of “What is marketing”.

3M:  Invent something cool, then find a use for it and commercialize it.

If 3M’s development model can be described in a single sentence, this is it.  And 3M’s history of innovation certainly makes a strong case for it.  Ask a 3M employee, for example, how their popular Command wall hangers were developed…  Well I have asked, and the answer is not, “We discovered a need for convenient removable wall hangers and so we set out to create a product that would satisfy that need.”  Rather, the response goes something like, “We invented this totally awesome sticky stuff that would not come off through direct pressure but came off easily when stretched laterally.  Then we went out and found a use for it.”  I suspect the development of products like the Post-It Note and Scotch Tape followed a similar path.

What is the development model here?  It is an initial focus on scientific invention and creative development, followed by an effort to find ways to commercialize what has been developed.

Danaher:  Capture the Voice of the Customer and Invent Accordingly.

Ask any Danaher marketing manager what they are passionate about as a marketer, and you won’t get past the first sentence without hearing the acronym “V.O.C.”, or Voice-of-Customer. This is the phrase they use to describe the process of figuring out what a customer needs or wants, and then inventing a product or solution to meet those needs.  Take the GearWrench X-Beam for example.  After exhaustive interviewing and observation of mechanics in their day-to-day activities it was discovered that it can become a significant source of hand fatigue to pull on a regular wrench day-in and day-out.  Try loosening a particularly ornery bolt with a standard wrench and the problem is immediately obvious – The skinny wrench digs into your hand when you apply a lot of pressure to it.

After making this observation, Danaher set out to use creative engineering to solve the problem.  The solution they can up with was a wrench that is rotated 90 degrees at the shaft, allowing pressure to be applied where the surface is broadest instead of where it is skinniest.  That simple change in design was enough to increase hand contact by 500%, torque by 25%, and net the GearWrench X-Beam the first ever hand tool commendation from the Arthritis Foundation.

What is the development model here?  The exact reverse of 3M’s…  Instead of starting with invention and moving to customer focus, Danaher starts with a focus on the voice and needs of the customer and ends with solution-finding through a streamlined and efficient process of invention and development.

Which is right?

Well, in this case, both.  3M is a science-based company whose strategic vision is to maintain a steady portfolio of newly developed products.  There is arguably no way to accomplish this strategic vision without giving scientists a certain amount of time to just “play around in the lab”, which to some degree is exactly what 3M does.  Danaher, in the strict sense, is more of a conglomerate.  Much of their growth is based on a strategy of acquiring other companies that fit well with their existing competencies, and in the business world Danaher has practically elevated this type of strategic acquisition to the level of art form.  As a result there must be a greater inherent focus on replicable, scalable processes.  And Danaher’s obsessive focus on capturing and responding to V.O.C. is just such a process.

Here’s an Angie’s List recommendation you’ll never see:

I’d just like to post a recommendation here for my painting business.  My crew are all great workers, they never come in late, and they are very careful.  They’ve all worked for me for over 3 years.  Call me today and we will provide you with a competitive price, excellent service, and timely completion!  Free estimates!

Self-promotion on a 3rd-party review site like Angie’s List is taboo, if not altogether impossible to do without blatantly cheating the system.  The very system is set up to allow a potential customer to receive unbiased recommendations from a party that does not have a vested interest in the transaction.

But here’s a Twitter update you do sometimes see!

Well, I just finished up a bowl of [my own product] down at [my own store]… It was sure delicious!  And healthy and affordable, too!  Stop on by [my store] to get out of the cold and try some!

Twitter as a tool is both more powerful and more diverse a tool than a simple third-party review site.  Figuring out how to use it in a business promotional context it can also be a little more confusing.  There’s no instruction manual, no standard best practices or limitations.  If we are accustomed to promoting a business through traditional advertising channels, it is only natural to want to use similar principles when promoting through Twitter.  Just tell people what makes us awesome, right?

Wrong.  People need to find out how awesome you are, but if it comes from you it is rendered invalid.  Unless you’re giving away a specific benefit, you’re not allowed to recommend or promote yourself!!!  It has to come from other people. There are many ways you can engage your customers on Twitter…  Advertisement-style self-promotion is not one of them.  This flavor of promotion is the equivalent of coming to a football game with your baseball gear … You may be doing a great job hitting that ball all over the place, but you’re playing the wrong game.

It has always seemed more or less straightforward to me how a consumer brand might use new capabilities in interpersonal connectedness to develop itself.  Business-to-Business dynamics in this context, however, have always been harder for me to imagine.  Why?  Perhaps it’s because B2B is generally thought of as interaction between organizations, not individuals.  It may also be because many of these types of purchasing decisions are so quantitatively driven that the “conversation” about the product just has a bit less proportional value.

Against this backdrop, I stumbled upon this little matrix the other day, courtesy of Ogilvy:

A glance at this table reminds us once again:  If a conversation can take place about something, Twitter either already is or soon will be a channel through which that conversation flows , and there are plenty of critical conversations taking place in Business-to-Business.

For industries and markets that are lagging in tech-savvy, the implications are twofold:

1. Those businesses that learn how to adopt and leverage these tools internally in spite of industry resistance will realize increased efficiencies that can give them competitive advantages over their peers.
2. As adoption becomes widespread and businesses begin to use these tools as instruments of engagement and dissemination, institutions that procrastinate adoption will find themselves gradually cut off from these new  key channels and markets, with potentially serious implications.