Answer Guy Central

It’s a simple idea, really: get peoples’ attention with a free offer, make yourself indispensable, add scarcity if you can, and they’re hooked. Social Media is just like dealing drugs.

Of course on the Internet creating scarcity is incredibly difficult, but hey: that’s why some drug dealers are more successful than others.

Public relations guru Peter Shankman has compared doing social media to selling drugs on the street. And once you get past the silly opening line—and judging by the comments on Shankman’s article it looks like people are having a hard time doing that—his words are pure genius.

Marketing, social media, social networking, or if you insist public relations are ALL about these points. People have to listen to you and want more. You need to convince your targets that you have something they can’t get elsewhere. You have to be easy and accessible, and you need—at least occasionally—to distract your targets from the fact that you’re trying to sell them something.

What are you doing to make the products or services you sell special enough that the folks you sell them to can’t live without them? Or at the very least, what are you doing to make sure that your targets are at thinking of you when they go out consuming?

Do I talk enough about the importance of an effective social networking strategy for your business? Maybe not.

The Onion has posted a video that takes the social networking thing to new levels, while poking fun at Apple, Apple fanboys, and social networking itself. The video has gone viral, which should be all the proof you need of how important understanding social networking and using social media is:

Forget Facebook; you never get to actually meet your peeps, and when you talk at them you can’t control their inclination to walk away.

Here’s what’s funniest about this: The Onion’s video is pure parody and is doing satire about social media in general and both Facebook and Apple in particular. BUT IT WORKS. The video tells a story, gets peoples’ attention, and looks . . . real.

How are you getting peoples’ attention? Does your social media and social networking strategy get the desired results? Are you doing SEO? The Onion does a great job at all that, and you can bet that this video has exposed the generally-fake news source to thousands, if not millions of new users.

The Answer Guy can help you with your SEO efforts. We’ll advise you on Social Networking, too, and get your plan set up and moving.

The rest is up to you. Better get over to an Apple Store early, before all the slots at the Friend Bar are filled up . . .

If you live in New York City you know The Village Voice. In fact, even if you don’t live in The Big Apple you’ve probably heard of what was once an important, influential weekly newspaper.

The Village Voice has become irrelevant. Why?

A few days ago, I responded to a tweet by social media guru Jeff Jarvis. His question: “When Did The Village Voice Become a Prude?”

My answer was that when they stopped being an independent property (The Village Voice is now part of the same big company that owns mainstream newspaper Newsday) they stopped having the freedom to say what they wanted to, when they wanted to, about what they wanted to. Simply put, The Village Voice had lost its voice.

Do YOU have a Voice?

Business changes. The business change at The Village Voice has been to make itself irrelevant by being careful about politically correct wording and homogenization of their message at the hands of someone with a “higher purpose”.

And THEN The Internet came along, and social media and social networking became the way we all started getting our information. Not a good combination of events.

Nobody is listening if you don’t have a message. Your job is to create one, hone it, find the people who want to hear it, and deliver that message, over and over and over again. That’s business change for you, creates business change for them, and is the way business (and marketing) get done today.

Need help? Contact Me Here.

I’m a nice guy. I swear, it’s true.

But I take the contrarian view on lots of issues, and that can make dealing with me quite a challenge. I know this about myself. And I lay it right out and accept that there are going to be people who like me and others that think I’m an arrogant, pretentious nightmare.

To those who think those bad things about me, the REALITY is that I am those things, because their PERCEPTION makes it so.

Everybody “is” a “way”. And if you’re going to effect real business change you need to embrace that way, whatever it is, and build on it. You can, by the way, choose to change your way, but that’s a lot harder than changing your approach and working with what you have. I, for example, wouldn’t be happy pretending to be a New York Yankees fan and don’t want to be one (Let’s Go Mets!).

As a contrarian I sometimes make my points by picking apart the points of others or comparing my position to theirs. I’ve said nice things about Seth Godin on several occasions, for example. And lately I’ve picked on Chris Brogan a few times.

You know where this is going. Chris, I apologize ahead of time.

A few days ago, Mr. Brogan wrote a dissertation on who he is and what he does. The occasion was explaining the redesign of his logo after quite a few people told him how much they disliked it. And while I happen to be on the “don’t like it” side of things, I totally agree with Chris’ ultimate point on the subject: he likes it and he has to be true to himself.

So why does Chris Brogan want us to think he’s not a social media guru and not a Twitter star?

As of this writing, Chris Brogan has almost 140,000 followers on Twitter. He’s also being followed in over 12,000 lists. When Chris Brogan says something, the twittersphere notices, and reacts. Chris Brogan IS a Twitter Star.

Chris calls himself a marketing consultant, and earns what I can only believe to be a very nice living as one. Social Media is a huge part of every successful company’s marketing plans today. Chris Brogan is a Social Media Guru, or he couldn’t do his job.

So why does Chris Brogan deny these things?

Because Perception is Reality.

Chris Brogan has decided that he wants the world to see him in a particular way. That’s a smart business decision, and maybe a real business change. If You Don’t Tell The World Who You Are, They Won’t Know How To Work With You. Seth Godin, by the way, does similar things. Like I said, Smart Choice.

But in with creating business change comes managing business change. And if the perception you create is that your words don’t mean anything, the (ultimate) reality is that they won’t.

Say who you are. Mean it. Own it. Your business can only grow when you do.

Yesterday I picked on my buddy Chris Brogan. Again. A genuine social media guru and one of the great successes in the field, Chris, like wine guru Gary Vaynerchuk, has become so much a victim of his own success that his missives lately have been reduced to Tony Robbins-like epithets:

Do Good Things, People

Yikes.

Now I swear I don’t actually want to pick on Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk, or anyone else; that’s just not productive. And let me repeat that I believe that both Chris and Gary’s recent pablum is more about feeling a need to KEEP PUBLISHING!!!! now that they’re so successful, their followers expect/want more and they expect the same from themselves—and because they preach continuous communications as their gospel.

In fact, I agree with them. You have to keep getting your message out there to be successful in social media.

But there needs to be a message. “Do Good Things People” is no more a message than “just ate a sandwich“. These are the experts?

Yesterday, I came across a couple of messages by Jeff Jarvis. Jeff is another one of those “man of the moment” types, and has a long impressive pedigree suggesting enough common sense about publishing and social media and behavior that when I saw these I cringed. In order:

• Darn, I do like Canadians.
• Ottawa cabbie really did say “eh?” in every other sentence. I wanted to ask whether he knew he was a cultural cliché. But he was too nice

Dear Jeff Jarvis: I agree. Canadians, as a group, are nice, especially when compared to arrogant, judgmental Americans. And they know that we think they’re way cute. And they just don’t care. They have better things to do than worry about people from The States making jokes about them. YA HEAR ME, DUDE?

Once again, though, there’s no message, other than one that sounds like “Jeff Jarvis is an ignorant American” . . . which I know isn’t the case.

On to business change:

Social media serves one of two purposes, and if you do it right and are lucky, both. It’s either about getting a message out (lets call that the business part), or it’s about embracing a new way to make and maintain friends. I don’t believe Jeff Jarvis’ on-line friends, social network, or whatever are of a mind to hear him sound ignorant about Canadians. So was he going for funny?

Yes, I believe he was. And he missed.

Jeff’s  a frequent guest on the Howard Stern show. He’s a funny guy, or The King of All Media wouldn’t keep asking him back. But 140-character Tweets aren’t the same thing as being on the radio. Or writing articles.

Social media isn’t going away. And Jeff Jarvis, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Chris Brogan have achieved critical mass, so they aren’t going away either, even if what they say is no more meaningful than what comes out of Kim Kardashian. YOU, on the other hand, have to do the social media thing, but not tick anybody off. It’s work. It’s hard. It’s Business Change of the highest order.

Interactive TV, decades after we started talking about it, is finally starting to happen. There are signs all over the place, and maybe it doesn’t look the way we hoped it would (“You ARE the Next Contestant on The Price Is Right—right there in your La-Z-Boy!”), but as I told you a few months ago, there’s live connection between what you watch on TV and what you do on the Internet.

Yesterday, NBC turned on something called Fan It. I’ve been there. I hate it. I won’t be playing the reindeer games at NBC FanIt any time soon, if ever. But lots of people will. There’s social media interaction (emphasis on “social”, “media”, and the intersection of the two). There’s mobile participation through Foursquare. There are prizes, sort of. And . . . it all proves just how desperate we’re becoming for human contact. Social Media, baby!

<Sigh>

I’ve been clear that I’m ambivalent about many aspects of social media and social networking. I think there can be too much sharing, and I struggle with the right way to handle that issue. But the one thing I know for certain about social media is that it absolutely needs to be on your radar if you’re reading this. Business Change is becoming more, and more, AND MORE about the way you interact with customers, and just plain staying on their radar. NBC and Foursquare are doing it. Signal distributors like Verizon FIOS are building interactive TV right into their service. And even if you don’t see the other side yet, you need to start moving through this tunnel.

That light you see on the other side might be a train coming at you, but stopping in your tracks isn’t the answer.

No one ever said business change was easy!

I’m neither a famous actor/celebrity type nor a dictator (although my kids might argue with the second half of that statement). But I use Twitter, and by now I hope you do, as well. There’s really no more effective way for a business to stay in touch with its customers, and thus bring about business change in a constantly evolving world.

Hugo Chavez, the dictator president of Venezuela, agrees. Mr. Chavez turned on his Twitter account less than two weeks ago, and is already has the most-followed account in his country.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise, and given Venezuela’s small size the fact that Hugo Chavez sits at number one with only a couple of hundred thousand followers shouldn’t come as too much of a shock, either. And never mind the ridiculous number of followers that a B-movie actor like Ashton Kutcher or a celebutante like Kim Kardashian can rack up.

What matters is this: social media and social networking work. Invoking my kids again, I’ll point out that they’re shocked to hear how many people follow me in one way or another on social networking and social media sites. I’m just not important, right?

But whether you’re Ashton Kutcher / Kim Kardashian, Hugo Chavez, or just Jeff Yablon / The Answer Guy, you can be using tools like Twitter to get your message out. And the world wants to hear your message . . . or at least some world wants to.

Hugo Chavez has found his world. If you like we’ll help you find yours. But please: if you don’t already have a strategy for social media and social networking, create one. Now.

FOLLOWUP:

It’s less than 48 hours since this posting went live, and while looking at the traffic reports for answerguy.com I notice that we’ve become Google’s second most important site for the search term “what works well in a dictator“.

If you still aren’t sure about the importance of search engine optimization, this should seal it for you.

Now of course, I don’t care about ranking high for the word “dictator”, or more specifically the word dictator in the context of that phrase. But because we drink our own SEO Kool-Aid, we’re there, and we got there fast.

Thank you Hugo Chavez, dictator President of Venezuela. And thank you, Twitter.

If a sentence falls on your computer screen and you don’t read it, did it make a sound?

In order to do my job, I listen a lot. I talk a lot, too, but if I don’t pay attention to what’s going on around me I really can’t be the kind of coach and mentor my clients need.

So I read. All the time. That’s great, because I really enjoy keeping up on what’s happening in the business and technology communities. Having it be a big part of my job makes everything even better!

It isn’t always easy, and the way I approach the task of keeping up on all that reading varies (as it should). Some things get mailed to me. Some show up in my e-mail or browser. And others come to me through an RSS feed (you can receive this feed by subscribing here) and land in my Droid SmartPhone.

Lately, there’s too much.

I don’t mean there’s too much for me to keep up with. What I’m saying is that there’s too much repetitive noise. On my Droid, I receive 300-400 articles each day, and a similar number of tweets from the people I follow on Twitter. It sounds like a lot, but I drink my own Kool-Aid and just as I put business management systems in place for others I have an information management system in place for myself that lets me get through that without missing much.

But I’m noticing that the 800 or so items each day are actually about twenty items worth reading re-issued over and over again, plus another dozen or so pithy remarks that catch my attention. I like the pithy remarks. But seeing the same story come across my plain of vision thirty times just tells me that there are too many people whose job it is TO TRY AND GET MY ATTENTION, instead of actually having something to say.

Yesterday, The New York Times announced that sometime next year they will start charging for access to their web site. They aren’t talking about what that will look like, other than to say that it will probably involve giving everyone a limited amount of free access, after which they will have to pay if they want to read any more that day/week/month.  They also aren’t saying how much it will cost.

The question now is this: will The Times and the rest of the “serious journalism world”  get us to pay, and will that spell the end of the amateur or underpaid blogging world, or will the opposite occur and we’ll be thrust into a world where more and more repetitive but mostly useless information is what we look at?

I hope paid content wins. You know that old line about “you get what you pay for?”. The words of bloggers are feeling more and more like they’re worth what we pay for them. And while I’m sad saying it, that’s a business change we all need to root for.

Does it matter if Bill Gates follows you on Twitter? You’d best hope not, because as of this writing he’s being watched by just under 200,000 people, but following just 40 in return. Here’s what DOES matter:

Bill Gates started tweeting just yesterday. He had 30,000 followers after fours hours, 100,000 after eight, and now, at approximately the twenty-hour mark, that number has doubled again. So the growth has slowed, as it does for everyone.

Most of the people Mr. Gates follows are not people at all, but charitable foundations. Makes sense; he’s the world’s largest philanthropist, and people watch those who are like them.

Bill also follows Steven Levy and Kara Swisher, technology journalists from way back. I’m a little jealous, since I actually dined with the then-Microsoft-Chairman twice back in the day, but Steven and Kara have stayed on the same path they were on once upon a time, while I went in a different direction.

And he follows Ashton Kutcher and Ashley Tisdale, which makes my head hurt.

Since the closest I’ve come to Bill Gates since about 1993 is when he and I went back-and-forth on LinkedIn last year I shouldn’t be surprised that I’m not in “the 40″. What I’m surprised at is that many otherwise-smart business people who tell me they understand the need for business change and the use of social media still aren’t doing this newfangled Twitter thing.

No, you aren’t likely to score 200,000 followers in twenty-four hours, and the chance of Bill Gates ever being one of yours is slim. But if that many people are looking, then you need to be in the place where they look.

The Business Change of Twitter, and social media. What are you waiting for? Lessons? Help? Guidance?

Please. You know where to look for that.

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.

Yes, it’s true. This guy updated his Facebook status and used Twitter to tell the world (or at least his world) what had just happened . . . in front of his new wife, the (in on the plan) minister, friends, family, and God.

Thanks to Michael Arrington, who I generally enjoy picking on.

Did you know a policeman can order you to Tweet, and If you refuse you can be arrested?

Got your attention, didn’t I? It’s true; at an event promoting the actions of one of the latest teen sensations, the crowd got out of control. One of the people responsible for the event was asked to use Twitter to help reign in the hysteria, and failed to do so. Result? Stainless Steel Bracelets.

Speaking from my not-a-lawyer-or-a-police-officer-or-government-official position, I’m trying to wrap my arms around this, and having a hard time.

We all have legal responsibilities that govern our behavior. For example, your right to free speech ends, as the saying goes, when you yell “fire!” in a crowded theater. But that’s what you can’t say. I’ve never heard of being in a position where you must say something.

The event “custodian” could have used the microphone on stage to ask people to calm down or disperse. Or if he didn’t wish to participate directly in the effort he could have allowed the peace officers seeking his help to use the microphone, megaphone, or whatever was at his disposal. But compelling someone to speak personally? Yikes.

Let me be clear: I think he should have helped. Now ask yourself again how important Twitter, Facebook, and other tools like them are, and whether you have an effective strategy for using them.

Have you ever said something you wished you could “take back”? Of course. Have you done it on Facebook, Twitter, or another social media site? Good luck. Social Media extends the limits of “no backsies” to a level we never thought of as kids.

Lately, it seems that everything around us is being tested that way. Gwen Stefani and her No Doubt bandmates have sued video game company Activision for the way their likenesses are used in Band Hero. The latest iteration in Activision’s karaoke-like music game series, Band Hero paid for the right to include No Doubt music and images of the band’s members in the game. Problem is, the band didn’t like the way the likenesses are used. And the suit actually uses the words “transformed No Doubt band members into a virtual karaoke circus act.”

Umm . . . yeah. What did they expect?

I don’t care who wins the suit, and let’s face facts: it will end in a settlement. What interests me is that the way we do things now is an invitation for post-communication remorse, and there’s less and less chance to think about our actions. The world has changed. So what’s to be gained from trying to enforce old rules?

Instead of carefully thought-out positions and controlled reactions to the world around us, we’re communicating in 140-character text bites. And once they’re out there, they can’t be taken back; Twitter, Google and Facebook memorialize then instantly.

If you try to live with that reality but also avoid confrontation with “the old ways”, you’ll paralyze yourself. So accept change. Embrace it.

And rock on, Hollaback Girl.

Here’s a tough one:

What if you know about an amazing piece of software, but you don’t use it because it adds to conflicts that other software has with . . . everything? Do you choke it down and use it anyway? Do you recommend it to others?

In my case the answer to the first question is no, but I’m so impressed with the software in question that I’m reconsidering. And my answer to the second question is a resounding “yes”. Go out and get Xobni, right now.

Xobni works inside Microsoft Outlook (the troublemaker I was talking about above) to make your e-mail better. Seriously.  I don’t make statements like that very often and generally The Computer Answer Guy steers its clients away from extra things that muck up computers’ inner workings. But Xobni is that good.

Let’s go a step further, since they just have: Xobni plays the business change / social marketing / social networking game incredibly well, which will help you do the same. And now, Xobni puts Twitter streams inside your e-mail. Big deal? Heard that before? Well how’s this: Xobni doesn’t just show you a string of Twitter noise, it displays tweets of the person whose email you are reading, whether or not you follow them on Twitter.

That’s right: current, <ahem> pertinent information about people you know, in your e-mail software, without you having exchanged recent e-mail with them.

Sure, it’s a little stalker-esque, but it’s also intelligence in an era where we’re all trying to figure out anything we can to grab an edge. In short, it’s the definition of social media / social networking. This version of Xobni is business change.

Now if only there was a viable alternative to Outlook, and if only Xobni didn’t require it . . .