“No one goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.” - Yogi Berra prognosticating the future of blogging
With SO many other thought leaders and wisdom available in other places, I reluctantly choose not to add content to this blog on a regular basis. Scour my blogroll for some fascinating ideas and insights from others who dedicate the time and resources to share their brilliance.
Me? I’ve resolved to remain active in twitter to share and learn on a regular basis. Follow me there for my thoughts and contributions: http://twitter.com/nickhuhn.
For the past three days, I’ve met a lot of new faces and also had the opportunity to hang out with some more familiar ones that I don’t get to see as much as I’d like to while back in the bluegrass. Sessions have varied wildly in quality and substance, so I’m glad this overwhelming experience has been rescued entirely by the more casual encounters and conversations that happen as a result of simply showing up.
Some valuable lessons I’ve absorbed at SXSW so far:
Among others, Henry Jenkins from MIT and Jason Fried from 37 signals encouraged us to fail forward. Nothing has to be perfect out of the gate. In fact, most things start small and improve with collaborative and iterative feedback cycles.
Twitter is by far the best communications tool I’ve ever known. For the past few days I’ve used it to enable logistics, to broadcast noise, to filter noise, to break the ice, to LOL. Metcalfe’s law is in full effect here; critical mass achieved and then some.
While freedom may cost a buck-0-5, it also means different things to different people. MySpace is beautiful because it enables relatively unbounded self-expression; MySpace is hideous because most people have “bad” taste.
No amount of free alcohol can turn off the feeling of having a swarm of bees in my externally hyperstimulated yet strongly introverted personality.
What’s the difference between a revolution and a civil war? The perspectives and objectives of the winner.
Standing in line with friends has been just as much fun or more fun than the parties.
Some unfortunate things I’ve observed at SXSW so far:
Smartypants people that boast of their smartypantsness can be really #$%#$& annoying.
Saying ^&*$, *$%^, @#$%, and ^&%@% makes you and what you have to say to an audience that much f*cking cooler
When speakers say “social media isn’t a one-way conversation like me speaking to you right now” while hundreds twitter and/or liveblog commentary based on their every syllable, it makes them seem a bit out of the loop.
Even the most independent of thinkers can be pattern-thinking members of a mob. it’s human nature; let’s accept it.
“Intermediate” sessions were typically painfully pedantic.
Prevailing theme of many speakers: ‘Adapt to the changing rules of the game. Or die trying.’ I still don’t see too much deviation from consensus. I want to see others that zig when everyone else zags.
Some general observations and related experiences outside of the panels:
Smorty71 is certifiably one of the best guitar hero players in the world. (video soon)
I do not aspire to be an influencer or gain notoriety. If it were to happen I would only hope that it were as ephemeral as it were insignificant.
Signal-to-noise ratios seem to vary by listener preferences.
SXSW has been an incredible and elucidating experience. It’s great to converse with so many like-minded people and have access to some of the greatest interactive / social media champions who are all doing their part to change the world as we know it. Each moment seems to yield value and interesting perspectives, and I enjoy immensely the energy and excitement that fuels the “revolution” in marketing and media.
I wonder though if it is truly a revolution or only a realization of the obvious: people talk, people listen, people form and share opinions. To me, the true power of social media is illustrated and proliferated at an accelerating rate thanks to the new tools and platforms that changing technology and pervasive self-publishing provide.
If I come back next year, perhaps I will share a lot more than I consume.
I’m thrilled that Social Media Club’s new Louisville chapter is already attracting a lot of people and discussion. Big ups to Falls and Earwood for executing on an idea which was destined to blossom among the digerati in the ville. Before our last meeting, Jason Falls asked me to fill in as a featured speaker for the evening. Normally not too many people derive value from anything featured or spoken by me. Thankfully I had the great fortune of playing clean-up after outstanding presentations and discussion led by Brian Wallace of NowSourcing and Aaron Marshall of DBSinteractive. Both offered great overviews and angles of selling social media to execs and clients, as well as some best practices and caveats. Honestly, I don’t really have anything to sell since my ‘vendor’ days are indefinitely on hiatus, so I wasn’t sure what compelling reasons anyone might have to listen to me. So I volleyed an example of selling lemonade as a child and how it might apply to social media to marketers. Since I hadn’t prepared one iota before the meeting, the concept wasn’t exactly developed when I lobbed it to the crowd. So I’ll give it more thought and detail here:
Marketing a product, idea, or whatever ‘viral’ ‘microsite’ for which your client wants to use to social media to ‘increase awareness’ only works as well as your efforts to sell lemonade would have when you were a kid.
{{diddly-doot, dream sequence}} So you spent all morning mashing hundreds of lemons into deliciously sugarfied juice, making pretty posters to hang on the neighborhood stop signs, and even got a nice comfy chair to sit in while you waved and screamed at the passing cars. Dozens, no, hundreds of neighbors and passersby see your lemonade stand, honk at your cuteness and a few even make time to buy a refreshing glass.
After your long day of hawking the citrus grok, your mom comes outside to help you tear down and revel in your success as a budding entrepreneur.
Mom:”So how’d it go today? Sell a lot of lemonade?”
Kid:”OMG mom! Like a bazillion of people came by and waved and honked and a ton of people said they’d come back to buy a LOT later on cuz they didn’t have their wallets on them.”
Mom: “So exactly how much did you sell?”
Kid: “Well, not much since this busy intersection doesn’t let most people stop to actually buy the stuff. And the rain kinda sucked. But like SO many people saw us and honked.”
So flash back to the present… {{doot}} this analogy reminds me a lot of what I’m observing as more and more marketers attempt to embrace this new-fangled-social-media-magic-pixie-dust to enhance the spread and velocity of any sort of message.
For far too long, traditional marketers and advertisers have gotten away with using hollow but hard-to-replace metrics like impressions and awareness. When we apply empty metrics like those to the childhood lemonade stand, we’d jump with glee at the 87% awareness at that busy intersection and even doubly so at the tens of thousands of impressions we may have received that day. The more sophisticated and refined analytics that can be applied to social media marketing initiatives, however, tell a story that most marketers might not want to hear:
Something about your efforts might really suck: your location, your timing, your message, or - gasp - maybe even your lemonade.
Is there a correlation between awareness, impressions and increased sales? Absolutely! But the days of listening to, “half of my marketing budget is wasted, I just don’t know which half,” are far behind us. New tech and tools provide us elucidating insights into data-driven interactions, conversions, and subsequently customer loyalty. Tech-based media also allow these campaigns and relationships to be measured and managed more effectively. A significant hurdle associated with tech/social/new media, however, remains the scary proposition of what messages can be enabled and propagated rapidly. No one wants to hear that their lemonade sucks.
We all agree that social media offers no panacea for marketers. Here’s what it does do:
Technology accelerates the consumption and spread of media.
Conversations and multi-channel media are not new or unique. Technology, however, makes our interactions more transparent, transportable, and enduring. And therefore more influential and authoritative.
Technology provides new ways to interact with people that may have otherwise never found you.
Technology-based media both initiates and perpetuates the conversation among and between individuals and people that represent brands. As in other areas of life, follow-through is often more powerful than the first impression.
If your marketing efforts indicate abysmal redemption / conversion / loyalty rates, maybe you should look at the way you’re making and selling your lemonade. More posters and honks aint gonna cut it, junior.
To put a bow on all this, I’ll summarize by suggesting to both marketers interested in social media and little Louie the lemonade mogul:
Understand that your lemonade better taste good. So good that people gush about it or chime in when others are.
Understand that some people won’t like your lemonade no matter how hard you try. How will you accommodate or otherwise satisfy these people?
If you really want to sell some lemonade, you should probably do more than slap up signs and hope that awareness and sales maintain a positive correlation.
Understand that only a small portion of your customer base is loyal enough and excitable enough to actively engage with your product in socially influential way. i.e. You don’t want BIG numbers, you want meaningful interactions.
The most successful purveyors of lemonade might use word-of-mouth marketing (testimonials, brand ambassadors, guerrilla marketing) to make sure their product breaks through the clutter no matter where they are situated. Interconnected masses can surely drive rapid and extensive awareness, but it is the personal - or trust-based - relationships that create engagement.
For instance: I love all my Sony stuff. So much so that I’d consider myself a Sony bigot of sorts. But I won’t be caught dead playing a ‘viral game’ or responding to an ‘innovative’ video ad unless it engages me in precisely the same way Sony products make my life easier, faster, and more enjoyable. Sony will have nailed marketing with social media when they send me an opportunity [not an ‘ad’] that invites me to recruit my friends into the Sony family in exchange for some exclusivity, exceptional value, or genuine entertainment. Presently, I am only passively enamored with my array of Sony gear, quietly waiting to buy something else I think it cool. But that won’t happen until I become actively engaged with the brand again.
What are you doing uniquely to sell your lemonade? How are you deriving benefits from listening and responding to your customers and fans? Media are inherently vocal and social by definition - remember to take advantage of that.
I got to spend a lot of time with my wife and kiddo today, and it was a welcome change from being hunched over a pair of laptops for most of the weekend. I’m still way far behind on many things, but I couldn’t be happier to spend time where it matters. Today was a wonderful day, and here are the videos to prove it:
Harper’s vocab seems to expand every day; she continues to blow our minds while keeping us perpetually entertained. There is a distinct possibility that she’s inherited a wily recessive gene known as extroversion… Harpie, you’re the bestest. More on my youtube channel…
Data portability has been getting a lot of buzz lately. I’m anxious to see how it pans out.
1) because I don’t want my data to be portable. Retrievable and secure, yes, portable: no.
2) when will PHR become part of the discussion? The last thing I want is someone (or some company) delving into health records.
That’s all the time I have to dedicate to the post, sorry. While I understand its merits and benefits, I just think data portability will come back to bite us in the ass in the way that offshoring spawned new lows in abysmal customer service.
Jason Falls sure knows how to force me to make time to blog; he’s tagged me once again for an interesting meme. I’m not one that spends much time on introspection, so this should be more of a challenge than I initially expect.
1. I was a director of the the TV studio back in high school.
I was pretty busy with working at PJI before/after school every weekday, but I found one extracurricular activity that I thought would be quite interesting. WSTX is St. X’s closed-circuit TV studio/station on which school news, sports and related drivel were communicated every Friday. Along with my good friends, Joe, Dallas, and Keith, we spiced up the programming to include segments such as the Disco Brothers and Nick’s Mo Betta Weather that aimed to entertain rather than inform. The Disco Brothers - Travois and Angelo - visited various locales with video gear and 70’s duds in tow to ‘pick up chicks’ and just plain boogie, so we had fun getting booted from the mall and other venues once or twice. In my Mo Betta Weather segment, I endeavored to talk about anything weather-related as long as it wasn’t about the actual weather. My forecasts typically read, “For this evening, I’m calling for a significant increase in darkness and a decrease in light.” Other times I explained how “tornado” was Spanish for “tornado” and when we took “a look at the national radar” I cut to a still image of a satellite dish. WSTX was never the same and purportedly maintains our refreshing comedic flava to this day.
2. I got mugged by the cops in Mexico.
Mugged. By uniformed cops. In a cop car. While visiting Oaxaca, Mexico. They stole the equivalent of $80 (like 2-3 months salary for them) and left me prostrate on the sidewalk. Thankfully some German tourists helped me back to the hotel. It was one of many reminders during my extended stay in Mexico to never take for granted the liberties and rights we have in the U.S.
3. I don’t love the 80’s.
Aside from E.T., U2, hypercolor, the California Raisins, and Michael Jordan, there’s not much about the 80’s I particularly enjoyed. Those Molly Ringwald movies? Never seen em. All those old songs my friends still sing along to? Never heard em. Apologies to nineteeneightiesophiles, but I spent most of the decade lost in books or the fascinating worlds and experiences I created while outdoors with my best friends and neighbors.
4. I maintain a repertoire of several ‘voices’ and ‘characters‘
Utterz has yet to experience the joy of my ‘alternative personalities’ including: Bill Dexter, the warshin machine repair man; Simon the socially-awkward and overly articulate geek; or Earl Greenburg, retired typewriter salesman from western Tennessee. Among a handful of other colorful people, these characters and their unique personalities were conjured up impromptu-style from the depths of my schizophrenic mind and may or may not have been provoked by the consumption of fermented beverages. In another life, I would have been Hank Azaria. I’ll record the personalities and post them when I find time; no worries.
5. I’m a terrible student
Well, not terrible, per se, since I’ve typically earned good grades; terrible in the sense that I rarely studied or ‘followed the directions.’ The vast majority of my academic career was spent with both of my thumbs and index fingers firmly plastered to my forehead in a big W shape. I recently read this fascinating perspective on high achievers, gifted learners, and creative thinkers and I laughed out loud as I understood how my brain really functions. I wish that sort of insight from my educators was available when I was younger; something tells me I would have changed schools for sure rather than just thinking about it. With my daughter’s genetic makeup, I’m sure she’ll skew further into ‘creativity’ so that was good info to know when she is accused of being “special” [in the derogatory sense] like I was.
6. I frickin love Rally’s burgers and fries.
If given the choice of Rally’s drive-thru vs. a Morton’s steak feast, I’d choose Rally’s 7 out of 10 times. Morton’s is the ish - don’t get me wrong - but Rally’s is an occasional guilty pleasure despite my knowledge of how nassty it is.
7. I’ve tried to leave Louisville several times
Every time I’ve tried to leave for greener pastures, be it NYC, DC, China, Europe or elsewhere, some force majeur catapults me back to Louisville before it’s too late. I can’t explain it and it has driven me absofrickinlutely nuts a few times, especially as disconcerted as I sometimes find myself with this city and its challenges. I guess someone is reminding me that I have some unfinished business in Louisville.
8. I loathe the fact that I am connected to a computer for 12-14+ hours a day.
In 1995 I was barreling toward a career as an architect, engineer, or some other tech-related field, but after spending a summer learning what those jobs were like, I decided that I absolutely could not sit at a computer for the rest of my life. So, I switched gears entirely and chose to pursue a liberal arts education with the explicit intent to avoid the use of PCs in my job. I hated the very idea of “liberal arts” at the time, but I at least knew it would expose me to topics other than math and science and IT. The challenge of focusing on all the right-brain crap I ‘hated’ would certainly keep me more interested and entertained than spending time on the left-brain stuff that I knew I could already handle. I’m just a big wad of useless knowledge across both ends of the spectrum at this point.
Despite my aversion to pooters, I can’t seem to get away from them. Honestly, I look forward to a new and totally different career someday - one in which the use of technology is minimal. There are plenty of other ways to create and contribute, eh?
Hopefully this self-absorbed tripe has been of some value to someone. Thanks for the exercise in self-reflection, Falls!
As much as I suck at updating my blog with meaningful content and conversation, I suck even worse at resolutions for the new year. So I offer the following resolutions for some of the entities that I think might benefit from a refocused effort to make progress:
The iPhone: I resolve to support Flash and Activesych. And I’ll quit crashing so damn much.
The FCC: I resolve to embark on massive PR campaign that explains the 2009 DTV imperative. Crap, I shoulda started a while ago if I’m really going to avoid massive backlash from the red states.
Ron Paul: I resolve to prepare “told ya so” remarks for my nomination to the Federal Reserve board of governors later this year.
Mark Zuckerberg: I resolve to get over my ego and recruit a real CEO to run my business so I can get back to tinkering with my social networking platform.
The Blu-ray / HD-DVD pissing contest: I resolve to just give up and realize that at some point this year I will be rendered irrelevant when a new multimedia A/V component is introduced. The new device from Apple/Sony/Amazon will let me download wide varieties of HD and multimedia content onto a massive solid state drive.
Yahoo!: I resolve to do something noteworthy, valuable, or innovative or face the unpleasant prospects of being a MSFT acquisition.
I hope these resolutions by proxy are taken into consideration. As for me: I resolved long ago not to make resolutions, but I’ll definitely make more of a difference in 2008.
The “creative versatilist” needs to come to terms with the fact that he currently does not have the luxury of spending much time of pouring much thought or time into his blogging efforts. And if he ever refers to himself in the third person again, a digital beatdown is warranted and invited. Reluctantly I traverse the internets as a media snacker due to my numerous and disparate interests and limited time. Like any self-righteous Amurcan, I’ll gladly consume much more than I contribute. My twitter feed has been re-enabled to serve as a posting mechanism here; I just can’t maintain a cohesive presence or predictable schedule on this platform. Yet.
Besides, there are a lot of cool, innovative, and/or otherwise ‘developing’ projects I’m a part of that while I’d <3 to discuss, I can’t yet release the felines from the burlap. You’ll find the remnants of my snacks and other seemingly pointless pursuits in the several feeds attached to my profilactic.com profile.
Wish me luck as we seek treatment and recovery options for the terrible affliction and recent onset of H.O.E.S.
I wish I made more time to follow college football (and sports in general). As a new parent and unrepentant workaholic, I don’t invest much of my fleeting attention currency into worthwhile diversions like most of my friends, although it would certainly keep me more balanced. Regardless, I have only two words of insight with respect to the cursory observations noted in my deluge of RSS feeds today coupled with prodding from UK fans on Facebook and Jason Falls’ lamentations on Twitter:
Play. Offs.
Not only is it best for fans and teams, it’s best for business. College football is still one heck of a ‘game’ that could benefit from redefining its ‘preferred outcome’.
Having been tagged by Jason Falls earlier today, I am obligated to partake in his “thanks for the influence” meme. Although I start each day with a hackneyed self-composed ‘prayer’ (below), admittedly it’s been a while since I reflected on a deeper level.
“dear lord: thank you for my friends and family; past, present and future. thank you for blessing me with the skills, talents, abilities and opportunities to make a difference. may i use them to the best of my ability and to serve you. please guide me with your grace and be with those who need you most.”
I’m a lot more spiritual than i am religious, but I do try to give thanks for the many people and gifts in my life on a daily basis. (I mutter this to myself while I wash my hair - works for me. Except whenever I smell the scent of shampoo I feel compelled to pray. Don’t you love the human brain?) In no particular order and without even more tangential stupidity, here are a few folks that keep the wind in my sails and for whom I am most thankful this year.
My parents: Having put up with more shit than a colostomy bag over the last year+, their courage, tenacity, and ‘take the high road’ attitude on significantly varying elements of life have been truly inspirational to me. Sure it’s easy to tag your parents as the most influential people in life, but they have both fought remarkably hard to overcome some significant emotional and health-related adversity for far too long. Mom says she’s thankful that my sisters and I didn’t turn out to be ‘druggies’ or ‘losers’ like some of our old pals did, but I can only thank them for setting a good example and reminding us through thick and thin what was really important. As a new parent myself, I will inherit and build upon the solid foundation of values and moral perspectives. I love you, mom and dad, even though I don’t have the emotional fortitude to say it aloud.
My wife: While my parents could have easily spent their life savings on therapy during the last several months, Megan could have crafted a few dozen episodes of The Office (and Judge Judy perhaps) throughout her grueling 2007. Her ability to persevere through anything - and I mean absolutely everything - reminds me of what it means to be strong. Megan’s 2007 trials aside [she’s moved on in many ways], I have to give thanks for her innumerable sacrifices as a new mom. Not only have I learned that my old bachelor pad laundry hamper actually doubles as a surface on which to walk and rest furniture, she sacrifices so much of her time and energy taking care of the unique needs of me and our new daughter. She’s completely selfless and modest unnecessarily, and I can’t imagine a better person to share my love and life with. Here’s to many more years of putting up with me and my quirks, and thanks in advance for the beautiful young woman that will take after her mom in so many wonderful ways.
Lin Sharpe, Linda Bunch, Gary Brunsman: Whether they know it or not, these three folks from several years back were awesome role models for me back when I was a clueless teenager working at one of the fastest growing pizza companies in Amurca. Linda was my first boss. Like most people with that responsibility, she had no idea what to do with me. But as a great parent and coach herself, she gave me plenty of opportunity to contribute in a variety of ways and gave great insight for my long term career. When I came to her during the summer of 1995 complaining that my friends got to make $6 / hr as lackadaisical lifeguards while I raked in the mad scrilla at $4.25, she reminded me that there was nothing lackadaisical about supporting the mission-critical I.S. needs of Papa John’s or me in general.
Lin Sharpe took the reigns from there. A talented and cocky recent graduate of RHIT, he took me under his wing in a tough parent kinda way. “Screw up and it comes out of your paycheck,” he’d quip as I frantically figured out how to upgrade RAM, overclock processors and manage the LAN/WAN as sysadmin. I had no idea what I was doing at first, but his unspoken and at times condescending confidence in me led me to be meticulous and passionate about my contributions to the increasingly world-class organization. Lin probably has no idea he’s one of my favorite mentors; he might think I hated him in fact. Quite the opposite, so thanks so much, wherever you are today.
Gary Brunsman was another supervisor of mine during my 5+ year stint at PJI. We worked together on papajohns.com as it evolved into an online ordering platform rather than a summer project in 1997. Suffice it to say that Gary was one of a few people that genuinely listened to me cared about me as an individual despite the pervasive, “oh isn’t that ‘doogie howser’ kid so cute?” stigma. I keep reminding myself that I was only age 15 - 20 when I did all that crazy stuff. Gary, unlike many, didn’t care: he was a friend first, mentor second, and supervisor third. He’s a super guy in general and we’ve kept in touch over the years despite our career and geographic moves.
Thanks to anyone and everyone at PJI that contributed to my success and adventures as we grew from <500 to 2000+ stores. I can’t believe how lucky I am to have been a part of that entrepreneurial adventure. Priceless.
My ‘IRL’ friends: most if not all of my ‘in real life’ friends probably have no idea what exactly it is I have done for the last 5 years to keep food on the table. “Something with websites, i dunno,” is the best way they can describe what I do. It’s probably better that way so we can keep to reliving high school / fraternity / mutual friend stories rather than link-whoring and hawking beta invites to each other on second life. The array of attorneys, investment pros, real estate agents, marketing / sales gurus, and software geeks keep the conversation lively by chatting about absolutely anything but our respective professions. Unless provoked. In fact this is usually my only information channel for learning anything about sports, pop culture or epicurean pursuits. Thankfully most of you don’t maintain blogs or any Facebook profiles I can link to right now. You know who you are and why you’re important to me, I hope, and I sincerely miss being a part of a crew with my new obligations as a parent. BTW, when your kid links to or ‘friends’ me someday, I might have a frickin heart attack.
My sisters, Jackie and Leslie: Rarely do siblings get along as well as my sisters and I do. We weren’t all that close growing up (who didn’t pester the living hell out of siblings?!), but through our high school and college years we all bonded in some incredible ways. Maybe it was the beer I bought for them from time to time, or maybe it was simply an emotional coming of age for all of us concurrently. Regardless, they’re my best friends and confidants and will continue to be indefinitely. In fact, I’d love for Harper to have a sibling just so she can experience the love and hilarity my sisters and I share. We couldn’t be more opposite on so many dimensions, but just like my IRL friends, that’s what keeps it interesting.
Happy turkeytime to all. Thanks, Falls, for making me think about this and preserve it for posterity. I won’t tag anyone because I hope they do a better job of unplugging for the next 4 days than I will.
I work with some of the coolest brands and people on the planet at Yum! Brands in Louisville, KY and around the globe. While I may discuss KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Long John Silver's and A&W Restaurants occasionally, the opinions expressed in this dialog are my own and in no way a vehicle of communication for the company or any of its brands.
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6. I frickin love Rally’s burgers and fries.