Joe Hackman — Page 36

How to Solve the Information Overload Problem

November 17, 2010 by Joe Hackman 2 Comments

There has been a lot of discussion about the Facebook announcement on Monday November 15^th. In fact there was a lot of hype leading up to the announcement. I can’t help but think it was sort of like the run up to the Google Buzz announcement and I could imagine the people at Facebook HQ saying amongst themselves:

“Oh boy, there is an awful lot of hype out there. Are we going to be able to live up to it or will we be the Google Buzz of unified communications announcements?”

I don’t think they can live up to the hype and let me explain why. I can really summarize it to a single sentence:

“Facebook is (mostly) a closed system.”

So how does a website that controls everything become a power player in something as open and free as communications? To be the key player in this space I believe there will be several important criteria:

Be a fairly open system with open standards and APIs.
Provide for connections to cutting edge, legacy and strategic systems.
Rich filtering and logic algorithms.

The importance of an open system

The swell of opportunity created through the open source movement has created great opportunity for an evolution of ideas and made many great things possible. Just look at the extreme contribution of some major open source projects from the last 10+ years (my top 10 list):

Wikipedia
Linux
MySQL
PHP
WordPress
Apache
Mozilla
Open Office
Creative Commons
Filezilla

The API issue is really a no brainer, to get a better idea of why read this article “Top 5 Reasons Why Your Startup Needs an API” while written for startups I think it is a great overview of the importance of APIs without getting too technical.

So if you’re going to make the big messaging play, you better be focused on being open and accessible already.

Being cutting edge while walking with the Dinosaurs

There are so many forms of communications that are viable and would be a part of any true unified communications system. Facebook is still a cutting edge platform in 2010 but they lack key strategic and legacy support that would be essential as the player in the next big messaging platform. Here are a few examples of the different systems:

Cutting Edge (current/bleeding edge tech)

Cloud Technologies (Google Docs, Dropbox)
Social Networking Sites (Facebook, LinkedIn)
Streams (Twitter, Buzz)
Voice over IP (Skype, VOIP carriers)

Strategic (established tech that is likely to be around for a while)

Instant/Text Messaging (AIM, SMS)
Blogs
Email
HTTPS (Encrypted Web Protocol)

Legacy (older technology that will largely fade away in the future)

Internet Relay Chat
FTP
HTTP (Web Protocol – yes, Legacy)*

*HTTP should be on its way out, this is a little bit of writer activism on my part. Many would argue it is a strategic technology.

If you review that list and ask yourself, who understands and communicates effectively with everything on that list (and more importantly all the other important resources not on the list)? I guess at this point the answer is no-one, and that is the “what” in unified communications.

The importance of curation, human or machine.

The importance of curation, narrow the stream or face information overload.

Photo by verbeeldingskr8.

If I were to combine all the communications I receive and process into one place it would be a big ugly mess. This is where the curation of the content will become essential to a unified communications platforms success. Curation will be the “how” in unified communications. The key will be to adequately search, filter and customize the data so that only the most important information is the most readily available. Allowing different ways to respond, perhaps knowing that for example a certain user prefers and responds better to Email, while another user responds more readily to Twitter, and so on. This will provide value on a number of levels. This will be a delicate balancing act because it must be easy for the end user to achieve high adoption rates, while technically pushing the envelope under the hood.

I think in 2010 many people are feeling over-whelmed by the data that they have to process. If you can cut through that mess, you will have a very satisfied customer. This is the “why” of unified communications.

This is my opinion, what do you think?

How to respond to customer complaints expressed in Social Media

November 16, 2010 by Joe Hackman 25 Comments

Just last week I received the first ever Email newsletter from Safeway. I had used their home delivery once or twice mostly as a novelty to see what it was like. I really didn’t want or need to get correspondence from them, I’m more of a “don’t call me, I’ll call you” type of person, unless of course I intentionally opt in for something. When I did receive the first message from Safeway, I was disturbed to be taken to a website with a login page when I clicked the unsubscribe button. I’ve already written that rule #1 of Email Marketing should be “1 Click Opt out and add me to the “don’t ever send me Email again” list. Obviously me having to login does not meet those criteria, in fact if I’ve forgotten my password (I had) I really don’t want to do a password recovery and waste more time to opt out of this message that is already wasting my time. So what do I do? I took it to Twitter…

The Complaint

Thankfully one of my Twitter friends @katiefelten also RT:

So in all honesty, I had no idea what would occur now. Would Safeway be listening? I had already verified they had a Twitter account. It turns out they were listening and responded:

Acknowledgement

So that was decent of them, at least they were listening and responded. That is certainly better than nothing, right? So I decided to make another suggestion, just driving the point home so to speak:

Suggestion

The Adjustment

Then I sort of did what I should and forgot all about it. This morning I received another message from Safeway. “Joe, MORE Exclusive Coupons Are Here!” oh snap, I guess I better test the unsubscribe rather than assume they did not listen. Much to my surprise it brought me to a screen where I could easily opt out of all of the newsletters. Here is a partial screenshot:

What can we learn from this?

Ultimately I have to say I am impressed with Safeway’s response and approach. I learned that they are:

Monitoring their twitter account.
Responding to “complaints”.
Acting on the feedback.

Sometimes I feel like Social Media is my only outlet to respond to bad service or poor policies. I really try to go out of my way to help companies that provide good services and products, but on occasion I have written bad reviews on Yelp. I certainly won’t be giving Michael Finney a run for his money, but it’s nice to know that you can have a positive impact in some cases by choosing to exercise your voice in Social Media.

Share YOUR story

Have you used Social Media to influence a similar situation? I’d love to hear your examples in the comment section below.

Episode Summary David Kaa aka @TheManwife on Blogtalkradio (Podcast)

November 15, 2010 by Joe Hackman Leave a Comment

I started following some guy on Twitter earlier this year who called himself “TheManwife”. He seemed to be a pretty funny guy and I wanted to learn more about his story and thought it might interest others as well. I invited him to be interviewed on my Podcast on Blogtalkradio and he agreed. What ensued was a very diverse conversation with a normal guy from Boston, living in New Mexico making the best of a employment challenged situation. Some of the interesting things that came out of the discussion:

It’s not cool to drive a mini-van.
When you’re the man wife people respond when you ask questions like “why am I so cool?”.
His followers provide better jokes than he does.
He made “periwinkle” trend for 5 minutes on Twitter.
He watches Lifetime Television for Women (for the “crappy” Titles).
Reads Quantum Physics Books.
German’s love aliens.
He’s the man wife because Mr Mom was already taken.
They have Road Runners at the zoo in New Mexico.
Gary Vaynerchuck is going to do an episode about Recession Wines next week for David

and Gary is a good sport:

Listen to the episode while you read on:

[audio:http://www.blogtalkradio.com/joehackman/2010/11/11/twitter-personality-and-humorologist-the-manwife.mp3?localembed=download]

David Kaa Allstar Quotes :

“When you’re not working pants are just like the days of the week, they’re not necessary.“

“I’m actually more of a Lifetime Television type of Guy.“

Exclusive! David’s book:

David is working on a book based on Twitter, that will be a completely social media driven book. It is expected to be released in 2011.

Where to find David

David Kaa @themanwife or http://themanwifechronicles.com

Check out his question of the day #manwife

The Manwife’s Twitter Recommendations

I like to ask my guests who some of the “lesser known” people that we are probably not already following that we should check out. Here are the man wifes suggestions. (By the way I keep a complete list on Twitter of “Recommended by Friends” Tweeple)

Melissa M @lisacandrive
“Lady J” @blondication
SuperMunk @supermunk

If you’re listed here and have a blog you’d like me to link to, please leave it in the comments below.

Listeners, what was the funniest thing you heard during the interview?

Where to spend your limited time Online

November 9, 2010 by Joe Hackman 7 Comments

You might have read last week about the PRapalooza on Blogtalkradio. During that episode I interviewed pros in the new media space Danny Brown, Gini Dietrich and Shonali Burke. In the course of the interview I had some prepared questions for the panel, the aim of those questions was to take advantage of the collective thought leadership of the group. One of those questions was:

If you could only spend one our per week on the Internet what would you do in that hour?

The responses of the panel were varied but speak volumes to where many of the pros spend their time. Here is a index of the time the panelists would spend based and where they would spend it as a % of the single hour allotment.

Panelist	Listen Plt.	Twitter	LinkedIn	Blogging	Youtube	Amplify	Facebook	Flickr	Email Mktg
Danny Brown	50%	13%	13%	17%	8%	0%	0%	0%	0%
Shonali Burke	0%	17%	0%	50%	0%	25%	8%	0%	0%
Gini Dietrich	0%	33%	8%	50%	8%	0%	8%	0%	0%

As you can see the panelists had varied responses based largely on their strategy but there were some clear trends:

This panel clearly believes that blogging and twitter are the two most important places overall to spend their time. I was also personally satisfied to see Amplify on Shonali’s list, no it was not a sponsored placement but I am to Amplify what iJustine is to Apple after all! It was also interesting to see how little time the panel would spend on Facebook, LinkedIn and Youtube. Are there any surprises in this data for you?

The panel was then asked the same question but in the context of their clients:

If your clients could only spend one our per week on the Internet what would you suggest they do in that hour?

This is when things got a little interesting and much more focussed, here is the index per panelist for their client activity:

Panelist	Listen Plt.	Twitter	LinkedIn	Blogging	Youtube	Amplify	Facebook	Flickr	Email Mktg
Danny Brown	0%	50%	0%	50%	0%	0%	0%	0%	0%
Shonali Burke	0%	33%	0%	50%	8%	0%	0%	8%	0%
Gini Dietrich	0%	0%	0%	40%	0%	0%	0%	0%	60%

As initially noted this activity is far more focussed, it becomes more evident when you average the figures out:

Not only does this panel believe that their clients should be more focussed they believed blogging and Twitter were even more important for their customers to participate. We also learned that based on the market they represent the time spent would vary greatly – Gini Dietrich’s clients are middle market and she felt that Email marketing was very critical to success.

My Allocation

I had obviously more time to think about it than the panelists did, but I tried to do the exercise quickly and decided to add this right as I was finishing the post:

	Listen Plt.	Twitter	LinkedIn	Blogging	Youtube	Amplify	Facebook	Flickr	Email Mktg
Joe Hackman	0%	17%	8%	33%	8%	17%	17%	0%	0%
Joes Clients	0%	25%	0%	33%	0%	25%	17%	0%	0%

I am probably more diluted than most people I do a lot of things but if it came down to only having an hour this is a pretty good estimation of what I would do with that hour. I’ve remained committed to Facebook because I think it is a excellent long term play. I am also very committed to maintaining a presence on Amplify.

For my clients I also recommended a more focussed approach but since I do see Amplify as a sort of hybrid between blogging and Twitter. I encourage my clients to use Amplify as a means to produce content on their blogs quickly and easily and as a place to start making connections. You can connect much faster on Amplify than you can anywhere else on the Internet in my experience. Those relationships carry over to your blogs, Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere.

Question: How would you allocate your hour?

Episode Summary of the PRapalooza on Blogtalkradio (Podcast)

November 4, 2010 by Joe Hackman 25 Comments

I had the great opportunity to interview some veteran’s of PR and new media on my PRapalooza episode on Blogtalkradio. If you’re looking for a primer on new media and PR this is a great opportunity to learn more from the pros. Here are some highlights that were addressed:

The differences between PR and Marketing
The biggest changes in and the future of PR
Effective use of (limited) time in social media
PR / Blogger relations
How much all of the panelists love Twitter
Spin Sucks
Learn why these panelists blog

Listen to the episode while you read on:

[audio:http://www.blogtalkradio.com/joehackman/2010/11/03/prapalooza-hosted-by-joe-hackman-guests-gini-dietr.mp3?localembed=download]

Quotables (don’t worry these are just a few of many):

“I don’t know how Danny does it, he is a blogging machine.” – Shonali Burke

“PR people don’t pay attention to bloggers unless they are the a-listers.” – Gini Dietrich

“You’re always as influential as your audience allows you to be.” – Danny Brown

Worthy mention:

Danny Brown suggested that Robert Scoble probably would not be a good candidate for promoting cow manure. He made his point and we all got a good laugh out of it. This was not the only comic relief by our friend Danny Brown.

Best Question and Answer:

Question from Ike in the blogtalkradio chat: (Hey Ike, if you’re reading this send me your Twitter handle so I can cite you properly)

“What is the biggest business world misconception about PR that you’d like vanquished?”:

“The idea that PR Professionals are spindoctors, that they lie to stories placed for their our clients makes me absolutely insane” – Gini Dietrich

Where to find my distinguished guests:

Gini Dietrich @ginidietrich or http://spinsucks.com
Danny Brown @dannybrown or http://dannybrown.me
Shonali Burke @shonali or http://waxingunlyrical.com

Recommendations:

I like to ask my guests who some of the “lesser known” people are that they follow that we should watch. Here are the lists by panelist:

Shonali Burke’s Recommendations:

Herwin Icasiano @iherwin
“Wedge” @wedge
Steve Crescenzo @crescenzo

Gini Dietrich’s Recommendations:

Jason Verhoosky @jasonverhoosky and http://streamingcreative.com
Scott Hepburn @scotthepburn and http://mediaemerging.com
Joe Thornley @thornley and http://propr.ca
Jon Buscall @jonbuscall and http://jontusmedia.com
Becky Johns @beckyjohns and http://becky-johns.com
Marijean Jaggers @marijean and http://marijeanjaggers.com
John Heaney @johnheaney and http://orange-envelopes.com/blog
Craig Jarrow @tmninja and http://timemanagementninja.com

Danny Brown’s Recommendations:

Tim Jahn @timjahn and http://beyondthepedway.com
Antonia Harler @antwizzel and http://socialglitz.com
Shannon Boudjema @shannonboudjema and http://shannonboudjema.com
Troy Claus @troyclaus and http://troyclaus.com

If you’re listed here and have a blog you’d like me to link to, please leave it in the comments below.

Listeners, what was the highlight of the program for you? Any key take aways?