Answer Guy Central

OK, year-end business change tidbit: And it’s more than a mouthful . . .

Business isn’t always an easy sport. I often say there’s very little about business that any reasonably intelligent person can’t figure out, but when it comes time to mix it up, roll it into a ball, and turn out a delicious piece of bread, things get . . . sticky.

So as we enter a new year, my question for you is: What is your Social Networking Strategy?

I’m not asking you about whether you’re on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. This isn’t about what level of activity you engage in or how much of your time you spend tweeting, linking, or . . . whatever we do on Facebook.  The question is: where is the intersection between social networking and making a pain out of yourself? And who decides?

I follow a few people on Twitter who abuse their positions. In particular, Gary Vaynerchuk and  Guy Kawasaki tweet way too much, with Guy actually sending out each of his tweets three times, eight hours apart. Yuck.

Yet I follow Guy anyway. And while we haven’t done business together I can tell you that we’ve affected each others’ days on several occasions. So are we friends? Business associates? Nothing?

If those are the only choices, “nothing” is the correct answer. But they aren’t the only choices at all. Further, since I don’t sell wine I’m not competing with Gary Vaynerchuk, and I’m not a venture capitalist like Guy Kawasaki.

Is this coopetition? Nope; while we all benefit from swirling our circles together, the only thing we’re all after is attention, and Gary and Guy are worth far more to me than I am to them. And that’s where this conversation gets interesting: they’re willing to help anyway.

Not too long ago I received a nasty note from Jon Skillings, the Managing Editor of CNet. To paraphrase, it said “please keep reading our material and feel free to take the extra time it takes to comment, but don’t you dare identify yourself“. I was flabbergasted. Then I responded to Mr. Skillings and he ignored me—twice.

Sometimes, you need to be Gary Vaynerchuk. Being Guy Kawasaki has its place, too. And that’s the point: sooner or later you have to decide how much social networking is too much, and then hold yourself to the same standards that you expect of those around you.

See you in 2010. My forecast? Business Change to continue . . .

What if AT&T, Verizon, and the other traditional “phone companies” no longer had to provide phone service?

It’s a tough predicament.

CLECs (AT&T, Verizon, et.al.) have a bunch of rules they have to follow that were made at a time when they held a different position. And let’s be honest: holding them to a standard that took into account a position they no longer hold really isn’t fair.

On the other hand: there are a significant number of people who still use CLECs in the same way they used them once upon a time, and dinosaur references notwithstanding it really isn’t fair to just cut them off.

On the OTHER other hand: the elimination of analog TV broadcasts was a similar issue when viewed from that last perspective, and the solution was simple: offer a converter box, and even subsidize it.

So maybe the solution is to provide a DSL converter free to anyone who asks for it, thereby dragging them into the digital age without really making them change anything. It would be a simple matter to augment that device with a very cheap router with telephone IP capabilities built in.

Problem solved.

Your business change issues can be solved the same way; all you need to do is think. Or hire someone to think for you.

At Answer Guy Central, we receive job applications all the time. Sometimes they’re in response to gigs we have available, but more often they’re  unsolicited requests for work.

If you’ve ever weeded through dozens or hundreds of documents like this, you know what it feels like; the very first time it happens you’re happy to have generated a response like that, and then you realize how much work is involved in reading all that material.

So why not limit the size of your next batch?

Here’s a job listing on Craigslist that’s been live for a few days. UPDATE: it’s gone now, so click this archived copy. Bottom line: it reduces the information requested . . . for that matter, the information accepted . . . to a few multiples of the 140 character limit for messages on Twitter.

Business change means lots of different things, and perhaps none is more important than eliminating information you don’t need. It clutters things up, confuses you, and gets in the way of your vision on the items that you do need to track.

I’m intrigued about whether the company that placed this ad gets who they want from it, but I sure do like the idea. Less really can be more, and if you can reduce or avoid storage of unsolicited material, shorten work time processing the “good ones”, and even do a quick pre-screening by setting up criteria that tests job applicants’ skills, you’re ahead.

Twitter for dating, anyone?

Heads Up: I’m about to tell you more about business and this web site than you wanted to know. Please pay attention, because your business survival in the 2010′s depends on it. Your next business change could be “no more business”.

On Christmas, I received a gift that I’m going to share with you. It’s this blog post. Read it, right now. I’m serious.

Here’s why that post is so important: it shows what’s about to happen on the internet, and if you aren’t committed to enacting real business change, you’re about to get lost.

Have you ever wondered why this web site is arranged the way it is? We gets lots of compliments from writers, graphic designers, and business types, and thank goodness, because as business change consultants we’d better look good to lots of different types of people. Go a step further: we don’t only do business coaching and change management, we also do technology and computer support, hire out virtual assistants to do pretty much whatever your business needs done, and even produce some media. And Our Virtual C.O.O. Services will run your entire business for you.

It’s a tall order, and we need to appeal to lots of people and come off as the experts we are in several seemingly disparate fields. And while the exact talents needed differ, the things we do are tied together by our clients need for a way to get real help simply in an ever-more-complicated world.

So now look again at that post I mentioned above. By all means think about how good it looks. Or if you’re like me, react instead by noticing that it’s highly stylized—maybe too much so. It’s like . . . a magazine. On paper, remember those?

We’ve all spent the last few years trying to figure out how to do things differently, and that post . . . that one darned post . . . says something else. We need to be doing exactly what we did for years, and it has a lot to do with the way we present ourselves.

Think about the other web sites you visit, and how much alike they all look and feel. How can someone who doesn’t know the difference tell one from another? The great content or writing? Hopefully, but there are literally millions of those “me too” sites out there, so you need to have something else.

Something tangible, but not easy to describe.

“Feel”.

For the third time, I’m telling you: look at this post. Look different. Sound different. Be different. Because all the big companies who can afford to do things the way this article suggests are doing so, and you need to figure out how to survive in a world where the big guys are communicating like little guys.

Wow. Two Kim Kardashian references in one week. I’m getting ready to call a moratorium on celebuntantes.

A couple of days ago I pointed out that Kim Kardashian might be in hot water with the FTC over her non-disclosed paid-endorser schtick for Carl’s Jr. on Twitter. The topic of business change is even more germane with today’s news that Pepsi is abandoning its long-held position as an advertiser on the Super Bowl.

Remember: in the earlier piece I pointed out that Twitter would reach people for about one-third the money that a Super Bowl advertisement costs, and that the eyeballs being delivered were of a higher quality because they had opted-in to Ms. Kardashian’s messages.

Seriously: why spend $4 million per thirty seconds of exposure plus pay for production costs and inflated salaries for people like Britney Spears? Social media lets you spend way less, and get more. Done.

Of course, if you’re still looking to “throw everything against the wall to see what sticks”, ads in the Super Bowl could be the right way to go. But fewer and fewer smart businesses see that as the right answer, and now even Pepsi is on board.

Merry Christmas. Now go commit some business change.

Back in August, I told you about a Ruling in US District Court that effective made Microsoft Word and Microsoft Office illegal. Banned. Not OK to sell. Well, that ruling has been upheld. Microsoft has been ordered to stop selling Word and Office, starting in about three weeks. And they’re complying.

So what kind of business change does this mean for Microsoft? How does “none” strike you?

Here’s the wrap: Microsoft has built software belonging to Canadian company i4i into Word 2007.  They didn’t pay for that software. What does the software do? It compresses Word files into that janky .docx format that showed up in Word 2007. It wasn’t there in Office 2003, and it’ll be gone in Office 2010.

Right. While they’ll have to make an adjustment if they wish to keep selling Office 2007 between now and when Office 2010 is officially released, the reality in Redmond is that this doesn’t even qualify as a speed bump.

Sure, the next step will be that i4i will sue Microsoft, this time to recover damages, and Microsoft will eventually pay them to go away. But the takeaway is this:

1. Microsoft can afford that
2. The tweak to Office 2007 is simple and all but meaningless in Microsoft’s plans
3. The real shame is that there will be a settlement instead of a trial, or a set of further appeals

Why? Because the much larger issue here is whether software patents as a construct are too broad, too easy to obtain, and ought to be issued differently. Oh wait: Microsoft doesn’t want that question addressed in court, and neither does i4i or any company making a living trading in intellectual property.

That would be REAL business change, of exactly the type that scares companies like Microsoft more than any little lawsuit can.

OK, so that hasn’t happened yet. But it should.

Kim Kardashian, one of those famous-for-being-famous celebutantes we just can’t get away from, has a new income stream. Tweeting. And get this: Ms. Kardashian’s rate is $10,000 per.

It shouldn’t surprise you that Kardashian gets paid to tweet, any more than it would if you found out that any message to 2.7 million people (her following as of December 20 2009) was compensated.

Now do the math: a television ad during the Super Bowl goes for about $3.5 million, and reaches about 400 million people. Paying Kim Kardashian $10,000 to put a message in front of her followers, who wish to hear what she has to say, is a bargain. The Super Bowl ad reaches 148 times more people, but cost 350 times as much. And a bunch of the potential viewers walk away from their TVs to get snacks while the ad is running!

Still think social networking doesn’t matter to the way you manage business change?

Point #2:  a couple of months ago the FTC made it illegal to blog for pay without disclosing that you were being paid. And let’s be clear; both by function and frequently being referred to as a micro-blogging service, posting on Twitter is blogging. So when we see this . . . :

. . . where’s the disclosure?

It’s coming, and soon. To be fair, Kardashian claims that when she posted that Tweet she hadn’t yet signed as a spokesperson for Carl’s Jr., so maybe there’s a loophole to wriggle through. For you though, the message, again, is clear: ignore social networking at your own peril.

Oh, and by the way: The fine is $11,000. This tweet could actually cost Ms. Kardashian money.

Want more time? Do fewer things. Talk to fewer people. Get OFF Facebook.

I’m feeling conflicted. Not at all surprised, but uncomfortable nonetheless. It seems that teenagers are starting to figure out that Facebook and other social networking sites are a great big time-suck. And, if not walking away entirely, stepping back.

I’m a big proponent of social networking. It’s not that I like doing it; all that time I spend on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and the others can feel like it’s taking away from my ability to actually get things done. But there’s no question that it pays dividends, too. So I endure—just as I keep telling you to do as a planned-out part of your business change.

But even with the very real family implications and the potential (so far unrealized and imperfect) to save you time, Facebook feels like a time waster, and I’m impressed that a growing number of (young!) people are both figuring that out and doing something smart about it.

Forget the “addiction” angle. While that discussion may matter in very real ways to both your life and your business, the idea is simpler than that: Social Networking has a place in your business toolbox, and you need to learn what the tool is good for . . . and use it.

Just because you’re a hammer, that doesn’t make everything around you a nail. Remember that.

OK, it’s time. You need to make your web site do more than just look good. Now, you need traffic.

You can buy traffic, of course, but that’s expensive—and not because clicks generated on Google Adwords cost so much (and they can). The problem with Adwords is that you can spend a fortune driving the wrong traffic to your web site, and take too long doing it since most people don’t even look at the right side of the page.

So you need to make sure that people searching for keywords that represent your business have links to you show up on the left side of their results. This is organic search, and getting Google to rank you high on that side is an art/science based on many, ever-changing variables. It’s called Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Search Engine Marketing (SEM). They mean almost-but-not-quite the same thing.

Aside from its ever-changing nature, SEO/SEM isn’t rocket science; you could do it yourself. But it’s time consuming, and that’s the biggest reason that our clients hire Answer Guy Central to do it for them as part of their business change strategies.

Today I came across an interview by Robert Scoble. I’m not going to say anything about the quality of the video; you can judge that for yourself. But the subjects talk about something that’s important: when you hire someone to do your Internet Search Engine Marketing, it’s completely reasonable to know how much money they make on the deal, because this is no different than hiring a marketing agency. Note again that at Answer Guy Central we do Search Engine Marketing; if you read this and later hire us it’s going to cost us money to have been this honest.

And that’s OK, because part of business change is transparency, and I’m drinking my own Kool-Aid.

We’ve cued up the video to the point that matters, by the way; enjoy.

How smart is David Pogue? He’s an accomplished musician. A successful business person. An author with dozens of well-written books under his belt. The lead technology columnist for the New York Times, and a talking head on television. And I know him a little; he’s a great guy.

But wow, is he asleep on electronic publishing.

Yesterday, David blogged on the subject. He asked what sounds like an innocent question, and the response has been strong and pretty much of one voice: “David Pogue, you need to pull your head out of that orifice“.

Specifically, David was asking about copy protection. He framed the question as though it was meaningful, and to his credit has done some anecdotal (and flawed, by his own admission) research on the subject. And certainly it’s meaningful for content producers like David who make a living producing said content to ask these questions. But David Pogue has been in the business for a very long time, and knows all the angles way better than almost anyone.

So why the question? Greed aside, it’s because business change is hard, and maybe even harder when you know as much about your business as David Pogue knows about his.

Should electronic books be copy-protected? No, of course not. Do people with something to protect have a reason to ask the question from a different perspective that the rest of us? You bet.

But books are different than movies and music. The analog equivalent is very hard to copy (except in excerpt), so it’s never been a concern, just as it wasn’t a concern when we used record albums for music.

VHS video tapes were analog and studios figured out a copy-protection scheme for them, and of course cassette audio tapes are easily copied.

But as time as passed we’ve seen time and again how copy protection simply does not achieve its desired effect AND is ultimately defeated. It’s ridiculous to continue to play this game, and the mighty David Pogue needs to be standing down his publishers (et.al.) on the issue.

I can’t wait for the New York Times to start charging for on-line subscriptions, and then to follow the Wall Street Journal’s lead and tell its electronic subscribers that they need to pay extra for SmartPhone App subscriptions to the same content.

Or better: I’d love to see them get it right and enact some real business change.

Want Wi-Fi With That?

How’s this for (long overdue) business change? : McDonald’s, the place where your kids make you go for periodic infusions of too much fat and sodium, has decided that the Wi-Fi Internet access they’ve installed and almost nobody has been paying for should be . . . free.

Wow. You think?

I remember when McDonald’s first installed Wi-Fi a few years back, and it was free. Then I remember when they limited things so that you had to buy a meal to get a code that entitled you to a limited time online. At some point they decided we’d pay. Almost no-one did. Ugly path that McDonald’s took to get to this point notwithstanding, I applaud them for this latest move, scheduled to take effect in a few weeks.

I’m not one of those the internet should be free! people (actually, maybe I am). But it’s so obvious that when a company like McDonald’s spends a couple of hundred dollars to set up Wi-Fi in a restaurant, and only a few dollars a month keeping it running—and by the way, those small numbers assume customers aren’t going to just be piggybacked on their existing WiFi networks used for store operations—that the benefit in extra coffee sold by making access free will far outweigh the potential revenue to be gained by charging for it.

Especially when Starbucks, Barnes and Noble, and Panera Bread all give away the access.

So congratulations, McDonald’s, on enacting a business change that will cost you nothing and gain you plenty.

Now: what can you do to enact simple, cost-effective business change? Ask us.

Using an iPhone, but prefer the Microsoft Bing search engine? There’s an app for that.

In the latest proof that Business Change is about coopetition, Apple has allowed Microsoft to put a search application in the iTunes store. What’s next, a Bing application for Google Android?

Since unlike Apple, Google and Microsoft both have search engines they want you to use, that seems unlikely. On the other hand, Google doesn’t have the kind of rules for their app repository that Apple does, so if Microsoft wants in they can get there.

The question is . . . do they?

The Answer Guy says ‘yes’. Microsoft has nothing to lose by trying to grab the attention of their most formidable competitor’s customers, and with no real barriers stopping them from doing so making an Android version of the Bing application is a no-brainer. So the next question is: why bother?

This is where things get interesting. As a Droid /  Android user, I’m not that interested in a Bing application. I already have all the functionality it offers built into my Droid, and the only business change that Bing on my Droid offers me is the need for a new learning curve. But Bing is different enough from Google that its fans will jump even if they use a phone running on the Google Android software.

Look for Bing for Android soon. Even if you’re Microsoft, getting more eyeballs more of the time in small incremental chunks matters. Grab that long tail. It’s the most important business change you can make.

So I’ve just listened to Chris Brogan and Julien Smith on a webcast talking about the subjects in their book Trust Agents. These guys are amazing communicators, and the book is . . . nice. But here’s the question:

How do you REALLY create trust?

If it’s true that we can each be really connected to only 150 people (a theory both Chris and Julien subscribe to), then how do we do business in a world where the game has become “have a brand and make sure anyone who could benefit from it knows that brand” ? Think about it: the “action” is on Twitter, where you seek huge audiences. But . . . then doesn’t the trust go away as soon as people realize you’re just broadcasting?

Keep talking. Even more, keep listening. And that’s the real story: to create business change, listen.

Here’s how important Social Networking has become:

Someone I know just became an uncle. Through the various familial dysfunctions that seem to effect so many people he wasn’t “in the loop”. But he was attached to the far-flung pieces of his extended family through Facebook. News delivered.

The story sounds sad, right? But where is the sad in the story . . . that his family is dysfunctional, or that the Internet is holding them together? Certainly the dysfunctional part is sad. But the part about the Internet as glue? That isn’t sad, it’s change.

Your business is undergoing the same kinds of change. Some of your customers (or potential customers) are best reached through methods that didn’t exist a short time ago, and might seem impersonal. Even Twitter has become a real method for marketing. This business change isn’t theoretical, either; it’s real, and it’s here. I hate texting, but I do it. And I have clients who are best reached that way.

Do you fight business change, or do you adapt?

Go with adaptation. There’s really no other choice.

How’s Social Networking treating you?

It’s amazing, right? A click here, a snippet there, and all of a sudden the whole world knows you. Business Change is a dream. It’s easy!

It isn’t at all. Now that you’re on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and wherever else, maybe writing a blog, and who knows what else, you’ve discovered how much work it is to maintain them all and keep them aligned. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a good way to post something once and have it show up everywhere?

There is. In fact there are quite a few ways to do this. And the best so far is Posterous. And it’s . . . not good enough.

Posterous has more connectors than any other service, and will even let you add your own. It does a pretty darned good job of getting your stuff “out there” in a way that will work (assuming you’re good at writing Twitter – style soundbites). And using the service couldn’t be any easier; you don’t even have to log in; just send your news to p...@posterous.com, and the service recognizes the address you sent information from and goes to work putting everything you want everywhere you set up. It’s as easy as can be.

Until you want to change your mind.

I hooked up the Answer Guy Posterous account to LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and this blog, and sent it information from both the Posterous web site and via e-mail. Everything worked perfectly, including embedded graphics, links, and text formatting. And then I took a look at what that meant.

Remember I mentioned that you needed to be good at writing short text bites? It won’t matter on some sites, like Facebook, but if you send something to Twitter or LinkedIn and it doesn’t “fit the format” you aren’t going to like the results. This makes perfect sense, but it shows once again why companies like mine get paid by companies like yours; this stuff is hard to figure out!

You’ll get past that one way or another. But if you decide you want to delete a post, things get tricky. I was able to delete my Posterous-created information directly on Twitter, and I could remove posts from this blog, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to delete the information that’s in my stream on LinkedIn or Facebook (and I figured out a workaround for one, but not the other).

Why can’t I retract everything I sent out using Posterous, from Posterous?

Technically I could if Posterous wrote the ability into their software, and to be fair to the folks at Posterous they’re best-of-breed as-in, but it just isn’t good enough.

Or is part of social networking never retracting anything? Is that part of this business change?