Blogs vs Websites = Conversations vs. Brochures

When someone develops a blog, they develop a conversation. A website, in the traditional sense, is not a conversation, but rather a brochure or a kiosk of offerings. When one shifts from a website-centric relationship with their customers to a blog-centric relationship, one stops doing a presentation and starts having a conversation. This is a key point. Not only do blogs get ranked higher via Google’s, Yahoo’s, and Microsoft Network’s search engines because they keep content fresh. Blogs give your customers a sense there is a living, breathing human force behind whatever offering you might be offering. This has extremely reassuring benefits, and if you encourage your customers to comment on your blog, many times, you can stand back and watch your customers duke out what it is that has been discussed in a particular blog post, and you can comment every once in a while. Very successful blogs have hundreds of comments per post. It is a live channel between you and your customers.

This is an asset, your customer’s input, that is priceless.

New Media and Your Career

With all the new media tools at our disposal, one of the most frequent questions I get asked is, how can I use this new media to serve my career objectives? I say, how do you organize and re-orient your career objectives to be served by new media. You have to think fundamentally different about a career moving forward. You have to be thinking like a media outlet — we are all marketers now, we are all sales people now, we are all producers, we are all visual artists, we are all videographers, we are all copyrighters.

You need to think of yourself in terms of the way a customer will find you. In the past it may have been the yellowpages. Today it is Google. Not only that, but once found, can you serve an increasingly mobile, interconnected world and meet it’s needs?

Now, Google delivers information most people use when they want to find out more about almost anything. In fact, if you get a resume into somebody’s hands, more often than not they will Google your name if you are being considered. So how do you control what people see on Google?

Blogs are the current best way. Blogs are becoming the new, best CMS (content management system) out there. They are not only a conversation with customers, i.e. customer service, they are also great at database building, video streaming, audio podcasting, etc. In other words, your channel!

How do you serve this channel? Build a business which is built for this model and you’ll be on the right track. Structure your job search as if it is a conversation on television. But don’t do this halfheartedly. Dangling a blog on a current business and returning to business as usual is not what we are talking about.

Here is an example of a traditional business/profession which has retooled to be a new media version of itself.

Once you catch this kind of vision, it will be difficult to go back to doing things that don’t look like a channel.

The City of Media: A metaphor of old and new buildings

When you enter any city for the first time, and see it with fresh eyes, you notice there is a mixture of old buildings and new buildings. The older buildings expose the heritage of a city, and the newer additions give one a sense of direction for the future skyline.

The same is true of the media cityscape. Some of the oldest buildings in the media landscape are book publishers, television, and newspapers, each wiring their old buildings for speed and flexibility in the digital age, but still – old buildings in their assumptions and business models. In the new media landscape we have websites, social media sites, information products, application tools, online coaching…things like that pointing the way to the future media skyline and operating with very different assumptions.

I hear a lot of new media people dismissing the old media, a lot of the old media badmouthing the new media, It’s like a city such as New York dividing itself between the pre-war buildings and the post war buildings. Ridiculous when you think of it. Yes, some of the pre-war buildings clean up nicely when modernized, and quite a few modern buildings won’t have the staying power and gravitas the old have demonstrated. Some old buildings will fall down. New ones will get erected and criticized. All in all it’s a teaming landscape with all sorts of communication going on. The old buildings maintain prestige by having large doormen, high barriers to entry. The new buildings let almost anybody in and can be a cachophany of noise and chaos.

Take the book for instance. Prestige and credibility comes with having a book, even a bad book. Not only does it take months/years to write, (in internet years, an eternity) it is approved, edited and vetted by a host of doormen; agents, publishers, editors, proofers, legal, etc. So even though that building is old and decrepit, still it argues for the bonafides of one who’s successfully run the gauntlet, as does a television interview, or a radio interview.

I write and publish this blog without a filter. No doorman. Always a green light. The presses stop when I want them to. And distribution is based on other’s desire to find my content. Truly a new building, as is a podcast, a vlog, etc.

The one thing all these buildings have in common, and the reason the city should work together and play nicely is: their success depends on traffic.

New or old media, it still comes down to traffic. Or put more concisely, attention. The city of media traffics in attention. Attention for advertisers. Attention traffic for influencers, politicians, fashonistas, commercial enterprises, and for stay at home moms.

Sometimes I think one should just pick a building and live in it. Other times I want to sample all the buidings. Peek in all the lobbies. No wonder our attention spans are getting so short. Our attention is being competed for by the slow and the fast, the old and the new, the rusty and the shiny.

The older buildings in the media landscape, unlike the older buildings in a city, tend to be larger. The newer buildings smaller. Which is fine. This small building only needs to influence the attention of a small crowd. The big old media structures are still tasked with housing millions.

I like this little sleek hut of a blog.

Make-overs in Microeconomics for Business Majors

A reprint here from a post a few days ago. By request, the links have been moved to the top.

My must see/read/listens for entrepreneurs, new grads fom college, and anybody reinventing their business for the next economic shifts.

- For a deconstruction of the television industrial complex which underlies many business assumptions – Seth Godin

- For a controversial take on 21st century economics – read version 3.0 of The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman.

- For Peer to Peer micro-economics see “here comes the p2p economy” by Stan Stalnaker

- For the “why” P2P microeconomics is possible and why niche markets are going to change everything, see The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson (also see this video for Anderson’s latest barn burner idea)

- For somenone who implemented extremely unique business modeling using P2P, Long Tail, World is Flat thinking, The Four Hour Work Week, by Tim Ferriss.

- For a head’s up on how to navigate the globalized commodification of business, A Whole New Mind, by Daniel Pink (watch all the little clips on “related video” side bar.)

TOOLS:

squidoo.com, digg.com, facebook.com, technorati.com, stumbleupon.com, de.lic.ous.us, twitter, youtube, myspace, etc. Pick one and have some fun building a list of friend who might someday be your customers.

- http://www.elance.com the ebay of freelancers. Business plans for 300.00 done by top MBA’s, in India.

- http://www.nichebot.com for finding out what everybody is searching for on Google, Yahoo, MSN

- http://www.tubemogul.com for uploading videos to top ten sites simultaneously.

- http://www.InternetBusinessMastery.com for info and podcasts about two entrepreneurs going from nothing to automated business status in under 2 years in Web. 2.0 Marketing

- http://www.wordpress.com to start your blog

- http://www.copyblogger.com for Brian Clark’s unsurpassed take on copywriting and it’s ability to influence blog traffic.

- http://www.PodcastingUnderground.com, all things podcasting

- iTunes for getting business podcasts for free. Staying current with Havard Business Reviews, Guru Thinking on Marketing, HR tips, etc.

- Steve Pavlina’s “how to make money from your blog” post for a comprehensive list of ways to do just that.

- Tom Peter’s Blog for break-the-mold thinking about your future in business. (click on Brand You in the categories list)

A review of these resources will jar you out of many assumptions about business as usual. This should be required reading for all business majors, IMHO. This is an amazing time to be alive. The dynamics of economics are changing in exciting ways. New business models are enabled by the interconnectivity, creativity, and innovation all around us. This is an abundant age, with extremly abundant opportunities.

To quote Tim Ferriss, who’s quoting somebody else, “the future is here, it’s just not widely distributed yet.”

The above will get you on the road to coming to terms with leaving the old habitations and getting on with the exhilaration and freedom from the industrial age and information age thinking.

Let me know if I’ve left anything out.

Burning Business Barracks for Deliverance.

Last night I had the opportunity to address two different business classes at Western Connecticut State University. My agenda for the evening was to get them to think in different ways about business possibilities in their future. More than half expressed interest in doing business as an entrepreneur. Nobody had a blog. Nobody had a podcast. A few had a Youtube channel. Everybody had a Facebook account. Many were afraid of the lack of privacy online, many accepted it. I tried to convince the students, and you know who you are, to think of themselves as a “media channel”, as the banner of this blog declares. People are going to dial you up, select your channel…Google you…and what are they going to find? An expert business person’s channel I hope.

How are you going to program your channel to distinguish yourself from others in the business world. Broadcasting yoru business expertise is the future. Controlling how you do that is the challenge. Changing basic assumptions about doing business is required. Moving out of comfort zones is necessary. Living with a high degree of uncertainty is required but the rewards are unprecedented in the history of business.

To get a metaphor meaty enough to drive the point home, I related the story of the rescue of the POWs from Los Banos, Phillipines during World War II, focusing on the reluctance many POW’s in Los Banos to leave their wreched hell-hole of a camp even when all the guards were killed and our troops had landing craft ready and waiting to take them to freedom. Most of the 2,000 American civilian POW’s weighed 100 pounds or less when the marines, airmen, and soldiers arrived to rescue them. Many POW’s had to be forcibly removed from the camp. Their comfort zone and disorientation was such that the army had to burn the camp down from back to front to get them to leave through the front gate towards awaiting landing craft. (BTW, if you get a chance to see the History Channel’s documentary about the Raid at Los Banos, don’t miss it. Details are here.)

What baffled me was how reluctant the POW’s were to be rescued in a timely manner after years of hoping and praying for deliverance. Hoping for deliverance is one thing, it turns out. Actually being delivered is entirely another. The history at Los Banos teaches once again that we prefer the misery we know to the unknown, however promising.

My hope for the students last night was to show them a way out of the barracks of old business before market forces burn them out the exit, to give them a sense of rescue, direction, and deliverance from the assumptions underlying many of their career paths.

I offer here a recap for those who wish to review, and for those who wish to pass along the word that the barracks are burning. I’ll just point to the links: (these are videos, summaries, and blurb links so you can scan and get to the point quickly)

- For a deconstruction of the television industrial complex which underlies many business assumptions – Seth Godin

- For a controversial take on 21st century economics – read version 3.0 of The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman.

- For Peer to Peer micro-economics see “here comes the p2p economy” by Stan Stalnaker

- For the “why” P2P microeconomics is possible and why niche markets are going to change everything, see The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson (also see this video for Anderson’s latest barn burner idea)

- For somenone who implemented extremely unique business modeling using P2P, Long Tail, World is Flat thinking, The Four Hour Work Week, by Tim Ferriss.

- For a head’s up on how to navigate the globalized commodification of business, A Whole New Mind, by Daniel Pink (watch all the little clips on “related video” side bar.)

TOOLS:

squidoo.com, digg.com, facebook.com, technorati.com, stumbleupon.com, de.lic.ous.us, twitter, youtube, myspace, etc. Pick one and have some fun building a list of friend who might someday be your customers.

- http://www.elance.com the ebay of freelancers. Business plans for 300.00 done by top MBA’s, in India.

- http://www.nichebot.com for finding out what everybody is searching for on Google, Yahoo, MSN

- http://www.tubemogul.com for uploading videos to top ten sites simultaneously.

- http://www.InternetBusinessMastery.com for info and podcasts about two entrepreneurs going from nothing to automated business status in under 2 years in Web. 2.0 Marketing

- http://www.wordpress.com to start your blog

- http://www.copyblogger for Brian Clark’s unsurpassed take on copywriting and it’s ability to influence blog traffic.

- http://www.PodcastingUnderground.com, all things podcasting

- iTunes for getting business podcasts for free that teach you almost anything now, that would otherwise take two years to get into a text book.

- Steve Pavlina’s “how to make money from your blog” post for a comprehensive list of ways to do just that.

- Tom Peter’s Blog for break-the-mold thinking about your future in business. (click on Brand You in the categories list)

A review of these resources will jar you out of many assumptions about business as usual. This should be required reading for all business majors, IMHO. This is an amazing time to be alive. The dynamics of economics are changing in exciting ways. New business models are enabled by the interconnectivity, creativity, and innovation all around us. This is an abundant age, with extremly abundant opportunities.

To quote Tim Ferriss, who’s quoting somebody else, “the future is here, it’s just not widely distributed yet.”

The above will get you on the road to coming to terms with leaving the old habitations and getting on with the exhilaration and freedom from the industrial age and information age thinking.

Let me know if I’ve left anything out.

A Great Post from Seth.

Emotions = Your channel. Check this out:

Simple, Elegant Peer to Peer Microeconomic Case Studies

If you could start up a business with little capital, doing something you love, and take it to profitablility within a year, would that be interesting? How about making an income worthy of a corporate executive without having to manage a fleet of employees or climb the corporate ladder?

O.K?

So make your own channel, create your own media, broadcast to the niche which loves what you do. Collect their consenting emails and everytime you post something new, let them know.

Here are three small companies, one to four people strong, which have done this beautifully.

One from kids: www.spatulatta.com
One from an adult: www.motivationtomove.com
One from a senior citizen; www.jacquielawson.com

Jacquie Lawson picked up the classic P2p business model in her late 60’s. She now makes 5 million per year at 72. Producer, director, animator, channel owner.

These are the early adopters of the microeconomics which will be a huge part of the global economy in the years to come. Start your own channel now and use your talents and skills to become something more than a cube slave.

New Media Cart before the Horse

With the seemingly infinite variety of social networking tools and online marketing techniques, it seems a bit overwhelming when you want to apply them to your organization, your marketing plan, your business plan, etc. In fact much time is wasted today doing new media strategy that simply doesn’t apply to the focus of your job, your work, or your career-seeking. New media does not provide a magic bullet for everybody that uses it, and many people have actually decided to just go back to e-mail rather than to dip into Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Squidoo, LinkedIn, etc. It doesn’t have to be this way. In fact, new media is not magic at all. What’s magic is when you have your authentic mission/self to be discovered by those outlets or organizations that can use your authentic abilities. So instead of putting the cart before the horse, which is new media before your authentic self or purpose. Define you service or mission clearly first, then select the new media tools that serve your purposes. A clear niche, target market and focus will turn shotgun new media marketing into rifle shots at your intended target.

Then pick one tool. Myspace, Youtube, Squidoo, etc. Baby step through it’s process. Finish. Pick another. Repeat. By years’ end you’ll have a steady stream of pre-approved traffic babbling your way. You’ll be “discovered” by your customers and you’ll find a large percentage are there for good.

Peer to Peer or Consumer to Consumer Microeconomics Overview

Peer to per microeconomics refers to the phenomenon, enabled by the Internet, wherein people with similar interests and similar focuses in the professional world, the non professional world, the family world, religious world, etc. buy, trade, and share goods with each other. eBay has provided this kind of forum for a decade now. But today this is atomizing. Peer to peer (P2P) can be something as small as a one person with a podcast or blog and their followers.  Offer a product, consulting or coaching to those 300 or 400 people and many are sure to sign-up. This happens all the time. Exciting examples of this are jacquielawson.com, InternetBusinessMastery.com, MotivationtoMove.com, and Spatulatta.com. In each case, they started out with a passion, developed a small following (by television standards) and now are doing what they love full time. The exciting thing is that there are no age limits and no real demographics. It’s all about psychographics, so peer to peer really refers to your peers psychographically. Those interested in the types of things you are interested in.

In the mass media culture of the last century, if you wanted to market Barbies, you would probably focus on girls six to twelve as your demographics. In the new peer to per microeconomics, if you collect Barbies, your audience is other Barbie collectors. If you have a blog about collecting Barbies, if you have a podcast, or if you do some sort of video journal about collecting Barbies, you will attract people who enjoy collecting Barbies. They will be anywhere from ages 8 to 80 years old. And if you decide to sell a collectible Barbie, you will receive payments from people aged eight to eighty. Peer to peer microeconomics is birds of a feather microeconomics.

Your digital channel is “New Trend” says Harvard. No kidding.

I noticed the other day Harvard Business Review’s trends for 2008. One they have identified as P2P, peer-to-peer, microeconomics. For anybody who has been in internet marketing for the past 2-3 years, this is not news. but Harvard has given a business-speak acronym to “having your own channel” entrepreneurship. This “trend” has been building for 2-3 years, of course. Early adopters and insiders have been the core of the movement, but now it seems it’s going mainstream and institutional. What does this mean? Well, it means official recognition that getting a micro-sized audience for your passion and then asking them to purchase something from you has become mainstream. Expect another year or two before everybody is doing it. Time to start your channel. To the mainstreamers who hope on board, you’ll be the an expert just by starting.