I was lucky enough to attend the first 99% Conference in NYC a couple of years back. It was an amazing bunch of sessions filled with truly brilliant people who were focused on executing on their ideas rather than just coming up with inspiration.
This talk by Simon Sinek I thought was brilliant and really made me rethink basic perceptions on how businesses operate when it comes to research and advertising. It’s 30 minutes long but I PROMISE is worth the view.
I’ve been playing around on Google+ for almost a week now and wanted to add my list of opinions to the millions that have already been thrown around the web so far. If you haven’t checked it out, I will say that it is NOT a Facebook, nor a Twitter killer. Here are my top takeaways from toying with the service:
1 -Seamless integration with your Google Account. I see Google+ as being a killer app when it comes to social media for teams or small businesses. The ability to share content within small circles as well as jump between group video chats and have your Google Docs at your finger tips is very cool. I’m sure Google is counting on the adoption not just to grow the + network but also to get more people to switch to Google Apps.
2 – Making you put your connections in a container as you connect is helpful. Bigtime. I feel like Facebook for me has turned into me sharing content with a large network of people, whom I know in very different capacities. Some people might love the Social Media content, others may hate it. And I know I can put friends into Groups on Facebook – it’s just too much work for me at this point. With Google+, you have to add friends to a circle (friends, aquaintences, work, etc) as you connect, making sharing and grouping much more manageable.
3 – Google hangouts has smoked Facebook video chat. The client is super light, easy to use and though we may not use group video chat much, I think more and more people will use Hangouts as an easy way to do video conferencing on the cheap. iChat was the best experience I’ve had so far, but now you’re removing the requirement to have a mac.
4 – No one is here. It’s nice to not be bombarded with brands or businesses or tons of people who want to connect at the moment. I feel like I’m very much in control of my network. We’re still defining the follow etiquette here but I don’t feel at all compelled to follow everyone back that adds me, especially if I don’t know them. Or, you can always add people you don’t know into a separate circle and share only what’s appropriate.
5 – Conversation: For whatever reason there’s a ton of interaction here. Way more than Facebook or Twitter from what I can see so far. Being able to see all the comments on a post makes it easier to jump in to the conversation instead of using @replies where you only see the pieces you’re involved with. Very cool so far, but will it last?
What Sucks.
1 – The population of Google+ right now seems to be almost all techies and marketers. Makes sense though since we love anything shiny and new, so we’ll move first but that has some major downsides right now. There’s a lot of noise. I see a lot of duplicate posts throughtout the day – way more so that on Twitter or Facebook and it’s distracting
2 – Conversation: No threaded comments make popular posts from folks like Robert Scoble and Chris Brogan eat my feed and take up real estate several screens deep. I wish we could see some threaded comments soon, or that the system would recognize that if more than 3 people have shared a post that are in my network, I only need to see it once.
3 – Lack of a Filter: I do like the idea of circles and the way following works on Google+. I can follow whomever I want and they decide whether to follow me back or which circle to put me in. However, what would be awesome would be some sort of application process where I could filter content from certain people. For instance, I wish we could create tags for each post we share (generic tags, but that were available to those who are in our circles). That way, the people following us could choose only the topics or tags that they want to follow, instead of getting a firehose of content and comments.
4 – Search: I don’t feel like there is a good discovery engine for meeting new people or jumping into topical conversations yet. Twitter is certainly the best at this (or at least they were until searches became filled with brands trying to sell things based on keywords). Maybe I’ve missed it but I haven’t found a good way to meet NEW people yet on Google+.
5 – The pace: I’m still in love with Twitter’s ulta fast pace of information and being forced to get your point across in 140 characters. It’s super easy to meet new people, share content and interact publicly – which is especially key for businesses to show that they can do online customer service. Google+ seems like it’s easy to follow people but not as simple to jump into a conversation then get out. That may change as more people get onto the service and start tailoring content to different circles, but for me I’m stil a Twitter diehard.
Bottom line? I like it. I think it has real promise, especially for both business networking and tailoring content towards certain groups. It’s great way to keep your personal separate from your professional (if that’s what you want), while maintaining different levels of connections – but on the same network. Honestly, I’ve already started using Facebook a little less (not giving it up yet though). I’m also very curious to see what the opportunities for brands are going to be.
So what do you think? Are you on Google+ yet and what are your first impressions. How do you use it differently than Facebook or Twitter? And what’s the thing you like the most and hate the most about it so far? Fire away in the comments!
In part II of my conversation with Michelle Chmielewski, we’ll talk about how she found her blogging niche, how she’s built a following and what happens when things go viral.
If you’ve missed part I – click here. We talk about Michelle’s move from Utica to Paris, what her role of a community manager was like and the cultural differences between the ways people use social media in Europe and the US.
Thanks to Michelle for taking the time to chat. Visit her blog and also remember to follower her onTwitter.
I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about the different types of pay walls and freemium services that exist throughout the web and the likelihood of people ponying up to pay for content. It’s a fundamental issue of supply and demand. With an infinite amount of content, does the value of most content drop to zero? And once we get over the hump of paying for digital content, are we predisposed to any particular formats or brands?
Over the past couple of months I have signed up and paid for a couple of premium newsletters. The first being Gary V’s Daily Grape newsletter that gives me tons of wine reviews (text) and additional videos. Great content and very useful to me. It’s once a month and focused.
I also have subscribed to Kevin Rose’s Foundation newsletter. It’s basically a newsletter focusing on startups and really great (in my opinion) interviews with founders of some of these companies. It makes me realize how many brilliant people there are out there and hearing their stories / methodologies really inspires me to try to execute on my ideas. Is it extremely useful content for someone who isn’t in the business of angel investing or a serial entrepreneur? Maybe not, but it’s good content and I’ve been willing to pay for it each month even though Kevin releases the video interviews for free (after 30 days, on iTunes as a podcast).
So then, why am I so willing to put down cash for these pieces of content and not, say, a digital subscription to the NY Times (which I also really enjoy)? After a little bit of soul searching I’ve come up with three possible reasons and am curious if anyone else pays for content online for the same reasons…
1 – Price. This may seem obvious but Foundation and Daily Grape roll in at $3.99 /mo. (for one newsletter / video). I can squeeze that coffee money out of my budget without thinking much about it. NY Times on the other hand would run me $3.75 /wk and only could access NYTimes.com and the iPhone app. I currently can get their 20 or so articles free per month – and top emailed stories are free on my iPhone. That subscription cost adds up, when I get MOST of what I want for free, and I feel like (at least for me) my price threshold for content (online or print) seems to be between $3-$4. It’s the same with most of the magazines I get if you break down the cost month by month. My subscriptions to Wired, Time, Fast Co, Food & Wine and the New Yorker all fall within that range.
2 – Precedent. I’ve always paid for magazines. They’re rarely free (unless you count Sky Mall). Even the online editions of Wired, the New Yorker, etc, while well done, are not as good as the magazine itself. I think of it as more of a supplement. These premium weren’t free to begin with. You want in from the start? Gotta pay up. But again, the low cost makes sampling worth it. One of the problems with the NY Times (again, just using them as an example) is that the content has been free for so long, and the best content is still widely available as it’s being shared through social networks. It’s hard to put that genie back in the bottle – even though I KNOW that they have some of the finest journalism in the world and I should support it, I don’t feel like there is an access plan / price point that hits the mark for me.
3 – Hyper-Targeted. This is one of the same reasons I don’t pay for cable TV. 90% of the channels are not interesting to me, but I have to buy them. It’s the same to a certain extent with any news operation such as the Times, my local paper, or even a situation like the Huffington Post. Would I pay a buck or two a month to get access to the NYT opinion pages and anything, say, related to Technology, or International Affairs? Maybe. I’m not sure, because I don’t know that I would consume all that content. Much of it may go unused. With magazine subscriptions or Foundation or Daily Grape, the content is hyper focused, I know I’ll consume all of it, and I know it will be good.
Keep in mind, I know this is dangerous. Only subscribing to and consuming content you’re super interested in or that simply conforms to your world view is a dangerous thing. I’m not trying to devalue newspapers or the online editions of newspapers. I am though trying to work through in my head why I reach into my wallet for some kinds of digital content and not others. And as time goes on, will more and more content be hyper-targeted and paid? Or will free content always rule the day? Also, with apps such as Flipboard and Paper.li where you can highly customize the news that gets pushed out or the news that you subscribe to, are we doing ourselves a disservice by eliminating content that we think we wouldn’t enjoy, but also happens to be content that may challenge us?
So this was a long post but I wanted to just get the question out there and maybe a bit of dialogue going. Do any of you all pay for content (I’m interested in print and online in particular)? If so, what do you subscribe to? What is your threshold of pricing? Leave a comment and let me know.
I’ve been giving some talks recently to businesses and groups on promoting yourself online and some basic social media primers for business. I try not to get all caught up in the tools or the 3rd party add-ons because sometimes those are the things that can get confusing to people and you miss the point of the medium which is interacting, listening and sharing… It’s not about any one tool. So I try to leave those out as much as possible in order to get people acquainted with some best practices. But I often get asked what tools I use on a day to day basis for myself when it comes to managing all that data. So here’s a quick overview of what’s in MY toolbox:
TweetDeck - for Twitter management and sharing. I don’t load in any feeds from other networks to the system except for Twitter, though I do allow TweetDek access to my Twitter, LinkedIN and Facebook accounts so I can manage what I share across multiple platforms. The software allows me to separate, sort and search the tweets from over the 1,000 people I follow by category (Local friends, Conference Peeps, Social Media Gurus, Humor, etc), as well as monitor keywords I’m interested in tracking. It will also alert me anytime someone is mentioning my name or talking to me via @replies or DMs (Direct Messages). There a are a lot of other tools out there (CoTweet, HootSuite and the official Twitter Client) but so far for managing my PERSONAL accounts on a desktop, I’ve been sticking with TweetDeck.
Twitter (for iPhone) – While I use TweetDeck for my desktop, I use the official Twitter client for my iPhone. It allows me to keep tabs on my groups and conversations in a simple, intuitive interface, but lacks many of the bells and whistles that TweetDeck has.
Su.Pr - Su.pr is a URL Shortener that I use when I really want to track the sharing of my original blog post content. When I share a link (www.ryancmiller.com for example) it will shorten it to something that uses less space in your tweet (www.su.pr/Ekfjr). But by using their dashboard I can log in and track how many clicks each shared link gets in real-time as well as any retweets, and even let’s me easily submit my content to StumbleUpon. It allows me to see when my content is clicked throughout the day as well as which content strikes a chord with users. I can then use that data to make better decisions about when and what to post.
Google Reader – If you don’t currently use Google Reader or an RSS reader to subscribe and manage blogs you like. Sign up now. I subscribe to roughly 75 blogs that I read daily (or whenever new content comes out). Google Reader dumps down the content from all of these blogs into one place where I can read only new items at my leisure, tag posts, share them, and organize the blogs I subscribe to into categories (Social Media, Business, Photography, Wine, etc). Because let’s face it – I can’t read about business all day every day and using an RSS reader is a great way to manage all that content without having to go to each site every day to see if there is a new post.
Instapaper – I constantly see links or headlines to posts via Twitter or Facebook that I want to read – but don’t have the time right at this moment. So I use Instapaper to save those articles for later. Using a bookmark link in my browser it will extract the photos and text and format things in such a way that it’s easy to consume at a later time via my iPad or iPhone. Get it.
So that’s a start, right? Those are just my desktop tools that I use (though some of them cross over to mobile) to manage content and sharing of things I want to consume or share. If you’re looking to not miss a beat with news, keep better tabs on those in your network, or just grow your chops in the industry of your choice, some or all of these may help you out. I also consult and help to manage a lot of this data for clients at the agency, and we use some turbocharged tools for managing so many accounts and large mounds of data. But this should get you started on a personal level. Questions, comments, complaints? Leave me a comment and let me know what tools YOU use that I didn’t mention, and why.
Over the past few years I’ve been trying to get more and more into wine – understanding what makes good wine good, picking out different flavor profiles and learning about the regions and processes that different wines go through to get from grape to glass. And very recently I’ve finally jumped into some bottles that are more serious, that may appreciate in value, that need to be put in the cellar for several years before drinking, and that require patience (my father actually built me the wine rack pictured just for these types of bottles).
As much as I’ve been investing in bottles because of the complex flavor profiles they bring, the ratings, and (hopefully) appreciation in value, want to know what I’m REALLY buying? Memories and Experience. More specifically, the experience of sharing these bottles with people. Wine is in a relatively unique (but not totally exclusive) position of being a product that has memory triggered hard-wired into it. The smell, the act of popping the cork, the taste – all things that tie us to a moment in time. I will always remember who I had that first bottle of Belhurst Red with, or the Brunello, or the friends who shared one of the best Riojas I’ve ever tasted. I’m paying for the experiences that go with the wine probably more so than the wine itself. In a lot of instances, that is a major factor in the wines I’ll buy. They’re awesome bottles in my opinion for sure because of the things that go into making a good bottle of wine. But I’ll seek them out and continue to buy many of them, not just to drink, but to display and remind me of the stories and experiences that I associate with that particular bottle.
We do this to lots of other types of things as well. Cars, vacations (it’s the whole mantra behind the souvenir business, right?). I’d ask you to think about a couple things for a moment and if you have some ideas, please fire away in the comments. In your business, what are you really selling-and how can you drive positive experiences into your products and services?
Do you have more examples besides wine where the intangibles often outweigh the tangibles? And – what is the bottle of wine (if you can remember) that you associate with a great time? Leave a comment below!
Over the past few years I’ve been trying to get more and more into wine – understanding what makes good wine good, picking out different flavor profiles and learning about the regions and processes that different wines go through to get from grape to glass. And very recently I’ve finally jumped into some bottles that are more serious, that may appreciate in value, that need to be put in the cellar for several years before drinking, and that require patience (my father actually built me the wine rack pictured just for these types of bottles).
