Listen to the groundhog

Originally published at: DogWalkBlog.com

Punxsutawney Phil being yanked from his comfy home by people who can't wait to know the future.

I love Groundhog’s Day. It is a silly holiday that you can just hype up and people giggle at.

When reading a post from Chris Brogan today, along with my Wall Street Journal, The Waterboy and a healthy dose of Morning Joe, I’ve come to a conclusion about this economic mess. The economy prognosticators have it all right. And all wrong.

Here is why Punxsutawney Phil — that famous groundhog — is relevant to what is going on with this economy prognosticators right now and what we can take away from him. If Phil sees his shadow, gets scared and scurries back to his burrow, there are six, long weeks of Winter left. If he doesn’t see his shadow, there are only six weeks left of Winter. Yeah!

We can learn a lot from this annual holiday in Punxsutawney, PA, but accurately predicting the future is not one of them. The “Inner Circle” of Punxsutawney have figured out how to get thousands of people to visit their little town in a very cold part of the country in the dead of Winter and all the news media talking about them for a whole daily news cycle. They created a legend of a groundhog, dress up in top hats, hold this grand ceremony and declare the future of Old Man Winter!

That is all these economy pundits are doing. Nobody knows the future. The quality of the remaining six weeks of winter is not a function of a skittish groundhog or a proclamation made by a fraud in a top hat, but by the decisions you make with that time. Will you hibernate and wait out winter or go out and play with the snowflakes? The choice is yours. Choose wisely.

As I mentioned in my comment to Chris Brogan’s post:

My take on all this future stuff, however, is to look at future films of the past — even as recent as the 1980s. Nobody got the 16:9 television. Even when screens were larger, wall-sized, the 4:3 format still reigned.

For the astute reader, you may have seen the mention for the movie The Waterboy in my opening paragraph. At one point in the movie, (toward the end, you have to watch the whole thing) Coach Klein envisions his nemesis Coach Beaulieu with the head of a cute puppy, is no longer scared of him and adopts a new-found self-esteem.

The next time you watch Joe, Pat and all these other prognosticators on television predicting gloom and doom, envision them with the head of a groundhog.

Then, go make your own future. It will happen whether you wait it out or not.

Cheaters never win

Originally published at: GerardMcLean.com

We have a trade association client in a niche industry who has a job board that contains 150-400 jobs at any one time. Along with that — available with their membership — is a database of folks who can be searched to match up jobs. Each day, 150-200 new applicants will put their name in the database, hoping that they will be offered a job. Most get jobs this way.

And access to the database of specialized employees for this niche industry is not that expensive, about $500/year. For this amount, you can reach over 200,000 potential people who have skills in the industry, with 150-200 new profiles each day. For the low price of $500/year, you don’t have to pay for an outgoing email system, a database management system, etc. It is all just managed for you.

Yet, even for some people, this relatively low amount is unconscionable and they spend time figuring out how to game the system. If they make their own database using Google Apps, hosted on the Google cloud and then send out an offer to all 200,000+ profiles to go to their site and complete their form, then they have the names for themselves and they no longer have to pay $500/year for access to the database. They are so proud of their cleverness; they have gotten something for free from the man.

Except they haven’t. What they have done overall is devalue the work that went into building the systems so they could have access. They have stolen what is not rightfully theirs. They have added hours and hours of management costs to their “free” structure. They are what is wrong with “free services on the Internet.”

Free is not really free. What people mean by “free” is it is free to them. But if everyone took services and did not give back, the trade association that is providing the service at a really low price will not be able to sustain itself and will close up shop, taking with it the “free” data.

Cheaters never really win. They just make it harder for honest people to weather the storm until they feel that even “free” is too high a price and go somewhere else, leaving real business to conduct its business.

Social media is this way. Twitter should charge for its services. So should WordPress.com. And Craig’s List. And newspapers sites everywhere. Google should charge Gmail, Apps and Maps users to be “ad free” and “history free.” I would pay as would many others because these services have become critical to their infrastructure. Someone, somewhere has to pay for the electricity to run the servers, the bandwidth to feed the Internet “tubes” and the salaries of people who constantly tinker with the connections to make sure they all flow.

How many social media experts would there be if they were forced to endure the “real costs” of the “free” tools they are using? Not many, but that would be the point. The experts who truly have skin in the game would be real experts and have real ROIs because they have lived through the real costs of competing in the game.

Free is a myth. Free devalues work.

The truth about social networks and blogs

Originally published at: GerardMcLean.com

I caught the Tavis Smiley show on NPR yesterday. Actually, I caught the few minutes of interview among him, Lesley Stahl and Liz Smith while running to my office to get some files.

I was curious, so I went to the Web site. It is just over a year old, but it has a full staff of contributing writers, a full inventory of ads (BTW, their ad placement of one advertiser per page is a compelling argument for how to accept advertising on a blog, but that is another post.)

From the wowOwow.com About Us page:

wowOwow is a free daily Internet website created, run and written by Lesley Stahl, Peggy Noonan, Liz Smith, Joni Evans, Mary Wells, Sheila Nevins, Joan Juliet Buck, Whoopi Goldberg, Julia Reed, Joan Ganz Cooney, Judith Martin, Candice Bergen, Lily Tomlin, Jane Wagner, and Marlo Thomas.

Many of us have known each other and been friends for a long time. Liz, for instance, met Candy in the 1960s when Candy was new to New York and an unknown actress. Candy and Lily worked together on “Murphy Brown” and found themselves in a mutal admiration society. Mary Wells and Joni Evans became instant old friends when Mary was writing her first book. Lesley and Peggy met at CBS News in 1982 the day Dan Rather called in sick. Peggy wrote a daily broadcast for him; Lesley found herself subbing for him; they pitched in and a long friendship began.

The truth behind almost every successful “Internet start-up” blog is a deep off-line network that meets with on-line talent. The truth behind the traffic for the same blog is off-line media and promotion. The success of the blog is also rooted in a deep and wide off-line network of contributors who have their own network of fans and supporters.

I don’t know if wowOwow.com is going to be around in a few years, but I suspect it will be much the same way the “kitchen table” has held conversations for generations of families. WowOwow did not start up as a new way of having social interaction, but as an additional leaf in the kitchen table. And, if the Web site were to go away, the conversation would still happen among the friends who are part of the site.

The ugly truth about success with a digital social network is the messy analog human parts that have taken deep root long before their launch.

Afterthoughts that didn’t quite fit:
- Liz Smith had a comment about putting opinions on the blog were easier for her, but the journalists, like Stahl, found it hard to express opinion as hers had been “surgically removed.” I think Stahl made the comment about the changing face of television journalism that it is changing and you don’t compromise your principles for ratings, etc.

- Liz also had a comment about the Internet is the future. At that very moment, I recall driving by a Donatos Pizza and the snow cone shack next to Kroger, and remembering the horrible predictions of the horrors of the Y2K thing that was supposed to happen Jan 1, 2000. Didn’t happen. We are still around. Does the snow cone shack need the Internet? Donatos’s Pizza? Would my car still be able to drive down the street? Not much would change if the Internet went away tomorrow except we might talk with each other more, read newspapers again, have fewer “friends.”

- One last thing, I promise. The Internet is not the future. The Internet is our today. Tomorrow’s Internet is the future.

For God’s sake, quit blogging

Originally published at: GerardMcLean.com

If you want your organization to be taken seriously, quit blogging. Quit tweeting out things and Facebooking. Or, more accurately, quit calling what you do blogging. You are not a blogger, you do not follow people nor do you have followers. Friends are people you go out with after work or have coffee with on a Sunday morning.

But whatever you do, continue to engage your customers, interact with them, write industry smarts and publish observations and analysis about your company, industry and your community on your company Web site. But, do not blog.

Blogging used to be considered cutting edge. Now, a blog is a bad four-letter word to media people. Blogs are where ugly rumors start and fester, like the one going on right now about Chris Brown and Rihanna. Blogs are where insane, bored and vicious mommies take down well-meaning and powerful brands like Motrin. Blogs are where kids in pajamas never leave their parents basement and spread lies about honest, upstanding, qualified candidates for Vice-president. Blogs are evil, run by people who are seeking cheap thrills at the expense of others. Bad, bad, bad.

Blogs are cheap to set up, offer anonymity for their publishers and writers, don’t have the same standards for honesty and integrity as other sources for news and opinion. The truth doesn’t matter, only about being first. Bloggers will throw every conspiracy theory out there — no matter how far-fetched — in order to be right on at least one assertion. And they never have to apologize or run a correction. It worked for Drudge on the Lewinsky scandal, right?

Quit blogging. You don’t want to associate with that sorry lot. You are a serious business-person who has a brand to protect and a message to manage. You can update your Web site with industry insight, post resources for people to easily research and comment on your service or products, you can reply back to a concern, support your customers and potential customers using some on-line tools.

But do not blog.

Social media is building value for human touch

Originally published at: GerardMcLean.com

Two separate things happened to me in the past four days that are starting to connect a theory around the value of human touch and social media.

I had lunch in Columbus, Ohio on Friday with a colleague who lives and works in central Wisconsin who asked me casually, “Do you know how many people were on the plane flaying out here?” I didn’t know, but I suspected it was packed, as the once-a-day from nowhere, Wisconsin to Columbus usually is.

“It was a 737. Every other row was occupied. There was almost nobody on the flight,” he mused.

Just today, Jason Falls wrote a blog post on Social Media Explorer. It may not have been his original intent, but he just outlined the case for why social media is building value for human touch.

This is good news for the airlines as their little experiment in the ’90s with low airfares all but destroyed the value of flying. So too for trade shows who are caught in the same loop of having to attract people to the shows, but charging little to get a crowd.

Networking is becoming a commodity. The more the social media experts and evangelists talk up the value of being able to reach out and connect with anyone anywhere, the more valuable human touch becomes. For trade associations that are forward-thinking and can weather this economy, selling human touch in a sea of social media will be like selling beluga caviar in a tilapia marketplace.

Trade shows are not going to go away. Nor are newspapers, executive conferences, books, in-person meetings or retreats. But, they are going to become more valuable, albeit smaller. While Twitter, blogs and email may start a relationship, human touch will almost always close those with the most value.

The challenge in the years ahead for trade groups who sell networking is to build value around the parts that require human touch, to squeeze as much value out of them without choking the participants and to not squander the precious drops they create.

Is your organization poised to do that? It better be.

Do your words have weight or just heft?

Originally published at GerardMcLean.com

It was a very long day yesterday for me. One of the things I like to do at the end of a very long day is to pull up my dog’s Twitter account and tweet out. It is entertaining, it doesn’t take much thought and since it is just a fun little thing to do to blow off some steam at the end of the day, tweets don’t really matter.

Do they?

Then I got to thinking about all those blogs out there, all saying the same thing. I looked at all my Google alerts that piled up on keywords that are so very critical to me keeping tabs on my industries and realized that most of the alerts pointed to the same articles, the same blogs, the same idea set that everyone else was having. Nothing new, no new perspectives on anything; the content was just in different places. For example, I watch the retail services industry. Paco Underhill wrote a book about why we shop, how we shop, etc. He published the first one over 20 years ago, polished this one off, threw in some new names, shiny new cover and published. Then, he got on the news circuit and now everyone is writing about his book. Paco this and Paco that. I don’t begrudge him, but while most of the news sites will review his book or interview him, most of the blogs take one of two stances. They are either impressed there is a science behind shopping or they are appalled by the degree to which we are watched and analyzed in pursuit of a buck.

Please stick with me, I’m getting to my point.

I could visit a hundred blogs and find nothing more new than what I found on the first one, yet everyone is writing thousands upon thousand of words about Paco. And most of them just parroting when someone already said. Sure, it gets Paco on a lot of Google searches and alerts, but at the end of a very busy day, I just don’t bother clicking past the first one or two. And I suspect most of us have very busy days.

So, back to me staring at Twitter’s “What are you doing?” screen and realizing that while I was doing a lot, I had nothing left to say. No pithy words, no opinions on anything in the news, no desire to tell the world what I was doing. And, for anyone who knows me, that would be shocking.

So, instead I tweeted out, “If you could only say one thing a day to everyone and it was 140 characters or less, what would it be? I’m going to try for one week.” What if everything we said was so valuable that we were forced to think about the weight of each word, the value of each character, the influence of the sentence? Would we have a well-crafted thought that was original and responsible or would Google just go silent as we starve it from it’s avaricious need for words? If I did it alone, would it make a difference, make people think twice and write once or would I just become irrelevant because I was no longer running with the pack? Would saying only one thing per day make me the purple cow or an invisible cow?

I don’t know, but I’m sure going to try. And, I encourage you to as well.

So, for the week of Feb 15 -21, 2009, anyone who wants to try the experiment, tweet out ONCE ONCE A DAY for a total of seven tweets. And make sure you use the hash tag #only140.

Think about each character, because that is all you can say. You can’t reply, you can’t explain what you meant. Each tweet should stand alone as the sum total of what you would tell the world if you only had 140 characters a day.

Give each of your words weight by using fewer of them.

I do all the work around here

Originally posted at DogWalkBlog.com

I do all the work and my editor gets HIS picture in BusinessWeek. Apparently that is a big deal in the human world. I don’t understand it.

Anyway, here is a link to the full web page. Thanks Shirley, now he will be even harder to live with.

These guys already got their stimulus

Originally published at DogWalkBlog.com

Dear President Obama,

I would like to bring your attention to several places of business and government agencies that have already taken their stimulus by raising their prices on goods and services. Should they come asking for a hand out, please let them know that they have already been greedy enough.

- Midas in Englewood, Ohio.
- Montgomery County Property tax people
- The Ohio BMV
- Anthem Blue Cross
- The Speedway on the corner of Taywood and Main
- Vectren
- AT&T Wireless
- Dayton Power and Light
- Time Warner Cable
- The Northmont School District
- Farmers Insurance
- Montgomery County dog license people

Thank you for listening. If you are ever in Dayton, Ohio, please drop by, scratch my ear, play fetch in the back yard.

We’re all in this financial mess together.. except me, and me, and…

Originally posted on DogWalkBlog.com

The Washington Post published an article on President Obama’s desire to pre-empt the network’s prime time with an address about the stimulus package that is being routed through Congress.

Broadcasters are bracing themselves for the likelihood of three prime-time interruptions in three weeks, totaling at least three hours of prime time — and ad breaks — yanked.

“His economic stimulus package apparently does not extend to the TV networks,” one network exec noted.

What arrogance! I got past the headline that read “Obama’s Preemptive Strike” but that snarky comment about how television is being ignored by the stimulus package by what seemingly passed as an “adult network exec” just ticked this puppy off.

For us who have been responsible, lived within our means, saved some of our earnings and still saw our home prices plummet and are told that bailing out our irresponsible, short-sighted, greedy neighbors is a good thing because “we’re all in this together” are supposed to give a crap about what happens to the television industry by “giving up” one hour of prime-time airtime because our president wants to address us as a nation on a serious topic?

The same television who took ad dollars for infomercials on how to exploit your home equity? The same television who put on show after show on flipping houses and making tons of money? The same television who shows a depravity of morality in exploiting “scripted characters” on reality shows and calls that entertainment? The same television that pushes a right-wing ideological agenda without conscience? We are supposed to care about television losing out on three hours of revenue because they show a blatant disregard for anything but their own self interests?

Idiots. Self-absorbed, short-sighted morons.

Pork with red [state] w[h]ine

Originally published at DogWalkBlog.com

Quite timely, considering what is going on in the US Congress about now regarding the stimulus package.

Because someone at iVillage was having a very, very clever kind of day and wanted to acknowledge their cleverness.