The Trouble with Crowdsourcing

Recently we decided to have some flyte bumper stickers made up. Ryan Goan, our creative director, created a bunch of variations (click on the image to the right for a detailed look) for me to review.

I decided to get some additional feedback, so I crowdsourced the review process. According to wikipedia (aka the Word of God according to many geeks):

Crowdsourcing is a neologism for the act of taking a task traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people or community in the form of an open call. For example, the public may be invited to develop a new technology, carry out a design task (also known as community-based design^[1] and distributed participatory design), refine or carry out the steps of an algorithm (see Human-based computation), or help capture, systematize or analyze large amounts of data (see also citizen science).

The term has become popular with business authors and journalists as shorthand for the trend of leveraging the mass collaboration enabled by Web 2.0 technologies to achieve business goals. However, both the term and its underlying business models have attracted controversy and criticism.

So I threw it open to my followers on Twitter and my friends on Facebook. When people gave two answers I split the vote. Here are the results:

• 1: 14.5
• 2: 6.0
• 3: 5.0
• 4: 6.0
• 5: 1.5
• 6: 10 

Well, 1, then 6 seems to be the big winners, but there's certainly some variables in there. Personally, I'm not a fan of 6 because the traditional oval bumper stickers have a border. There was also a lot of discussion around whether we could "pull off" a bumper sticker that didn't include our name and had our URL so tiny.

However, I don't think a lot of people make a buying decision based on bumper stickers.

"You know, I was going to vote for Obama, but that 'McCain/Palin 2008' bumper sticker makes a lot of sense. I think I'm voting for them."

I've always felt the plane was a pretty cool icon, and people who see it might be intrested to learn more about the story behind it, a.k.a. flyte.biz.

So, at the end of the day I'm no closer to a decision. I do like #1, although I'm thinking of dropping the www off the URL for additional white space, or even perhaps just leaving ".biz" in small letters below. I also like #3, perhaps with the www-less URL.

Anyway, if you'd like to confuse me further, please feel free to add your own thoughts below. It still hasn't gone to the printer.

Rich Brooks
Consensusless

Social Media FTW: Call for Speakers & Presenters

Save the Date! On Wednesday, 9/23/2009, we'll be hosting an all-day, roll-up-your-sleeves social media conference at the University of Southern Maine. (For more on who "we" are, see below.)

If you've been looking to move past the hype and learn how to integrate social media activities into your sales and marketing and to put social media to work for your business, then this is the event for you.

• There will be strategic workshops led by some of the most experienced, well-known social media marketers around, targeting both beginners and advanced users.
• There will be panels that focus on small business, large corporations, non-profits and traditional media.
  
• There will be "social media kiosks" open throughout the conference with volunteers who will help you setup or improve accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and others.
• There will be plenty of networking opportunities, both at the event and afterwards.

In the next two weeks we'll be launching the Web site and announcing more details and pricing as well as opportunities for exhibiting and sponsors.

However, right now we're announcing a call for presenters. If you have experience in social media to market your business we're interested in hearing from you.

While we're looking for ideas on what you'd like to speak on, here are some suggested topics to get you started:

• Twitter
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• MySpace
• YouTube/video sharing
• Flickr/photo sharing
• Blogging
• Podcasting
• Social Media for small business/large companies/non-profits/traditional media
• Social media and time management
• Social media and ROI (return on investment)

Remember: the purpose of this event is for attendees to go home with specific actions they can take to grow their business, engage their membership, network more effectively, and integrate social media into their sales and marketing activities.

No hype, no pitches, no B.S. If it's not going to help attendees we're not interested. If you would like to exhibit at or sponsor the conference to be able to reach an audience of experienced marketers and business people, please send inquiries to socialmediaftw@gmail.com.

Speakers will receive full access to the conference, promotion at the Web site and access to an affiliate program.

We're accepting submissions through June 19th, 2009.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Who "We" Are:

Social Media FTW is the brain child of Jaica Kinsman (http://twitter.com/jakks), Chrystie Corns (http://twitter.com/ccmaine) and Rich Brooks (http://twitter.com/therichbrooks). Our goal is to get businesses, non-profits and traditional media professionals in Maine and beyond to understand and leverage the power of social media.

Social Media & Time Management: Yes, It's Possible

The question I can most reliably count on during any presentation I give on blogging or social media is "how do you find time for all this?" or "how long does this all take?"

Recently, when I was presenting to the National Association of Professional Organizers, I mentioned that I was about to write an article on time management and social media. Almost everyone in the room wanted a copy of that article.

Although the use of social media marketing is going mainstream--every news organization sports a variety of pro-am blogs, the "graying of Facebook," and Oprah jumping on Twitter--it can still seem overwhelming to small business owners and entrepreneurs who already have too much on their plate.

In this month's issue of flyte log, our email newsletter on Web marketing for small business, you'll find a three-step process to get your social media activities under control.

Whether you're using social media for research, networking, sales & marketing or some combination of the three, you'll find advice on how to better manage the time you spend with these powerful new marketing tools.

If you're concerned with how much time you're spending on Twitter, or have been avoiding Facebook or LinkedIn because you're concerned other work will suffer, check out 3 Steps to Better Time Management of Social Media Marketing.

For additional resources on time management and social media check out these sites:

• Time Management in the Age of Social Media - BusinessWeek
• Social media time management strategy « one cool site: blogging tips
• Lifehacker - Get Productive with Social Media (and Stay Sane) - FriendFeed
• How To Avoid The Social Media Time Suck
• FriendFeed Filters Are The Star Of The Beta | Bwana.org

Rich Brooks
That Social Media Guy

Two Social Media Marketing Events This Week

If you're looking to learn more about social media marketing and how you can better navigate these waters, I have two events this week you may be interested in; one requires you visit the Pine Tree State (Maine), the other is a Webinar.

SOCIAL MEDIA BREAKFAST - Wed, 4/22/09, 8am - 10am

Are you ready to kickstart your small business into high gear with Social Media? Maybe you work for a company which doesn't quite 'get social media' yet. Come to the Social Media Breakfast (SMBME) on April 22nd at 8:00 am to get some valuable insight into social media from experts who are using it on a daily basis. The sessions include topics from Social media integration, personal branding to Social Media case studies. A lot is jam packed into this 2 hour event, be here on time so you don't miss a thing!

Maine's first Social Media Breakfast is organized by Chrystie Corns of Where.com and Rich Brooks of flyte new media. Social Media Breakfast aims to bring together social media experts, ethusiasts, small business owners and anyone with an interest in learning more about social media.  SMBME #1 will consist of 4 15-20 minute presentations from some of the top Social Media experts in the area.

There's only 9 tickets left as I write this! And it's only $6! That's less than I paid for breakfast this morning, and breakfast is included. Learn more and register now!

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING - Thurs, 4/23/09, 12pm - 1:30pm

Facebook. MySpace. LinkedIn. Twitter. Blogs. Podcasts. RSS. Ning. YouTube. Flickr. FriendFeed. Bebo. del.icio.us. Digg. Arrrgh! Are these even all real words?!?

Maybe you've heard of some or all of these social media services. Maybe they're all new. Maybe your teenager is on Facebook or MySpace and you're wondering what these sites could possibly offer your business.

If you're looking to learn more about social media and how you might use these free tools to connect with prospects and customers, this is the class for you.

Attendees will learn:

• About many of the most important, popular social media Web sites.
• How to connect with like-minded people for business opportunities
• How to promote events and seminars using social media.

This Webinar is free for MEBSR members and for everyone else it's $49 which goes to Maine Businesses for Social Responsibility.

To register for this Webinar, and to get your MEBSR discount code, please click here.

Time to get in touch with your social media self.

Rich Brooks
That Social Media Guy

Online Reputation Management for Your Company and Your Brand

It's the first Tuesday of the month again, which means it's time for another episode of flyte log: the further adventures of web marketing guy.

Or something like that.

This month's issue of flyte log is entitled Online Reputation Management for Small Business. It built from an interview I did with the local news station on online reputation management, although that was more targeted towards people and teens.

Not that teens aren't people; just that I spent some time talking about teens and what they should be aware of.

In any event, I decided there was a lot more to be said in how to monitor, manage and improve your company's reputation online, through social media and search engine optimization. If you want to learn more about how to listen to conversations about your company, keep negative comments off the first page of Google, and improve your online reputation, there's no better place to start than Online Reputation Management for Small Business.

Rich Brooks
Posting Only What My Mother Would Approve

Managing Your--And Your Company's--Online Reputation

The other night I was on 207, the evening news magazine here in Maine, talking about managing your--and your company's--online reputation.

Like always, I ended up preparing about 20 minutes worth of material for a 5 minute segment; as I was doing my research I found a lot of stuff I wanted to share. Here are my notes:

What is online reputation?

• What people (and you) are saying about you and your business online. [It's the digital footprint that you leave behind, and it's what people are going to see when they Google you or your business for more information.]
• There are sites (links appear below) that will help you manage and maintain your online rep, but the best steps are preventative ones.

How can you see what people are saying about you?

• Google [Who hasn't Googled themselves, or their business, or a date?]
• Search.Twitter.com. [This will search what people are saying about you or your brand on the popular microblogging platform on Twitter in REAL TIME!]

What can people do to maintain a positive online reputation?

• Behave online as you would behave offline [This assumes you're not a jerk or a cheat offline. Also, understand that what you do offline has a habit of being recorded online. Right, Mr. Phelps? Alec Baldwin? David Hasselhoff?]
• Remember that everything you do online will be there FOREVER!
• Sometimes you may get tagged in a photo or video that doesn't put you in the best light. If a friend posts something that you might not want your boss/mom/whomever to see you should quietly ask them to take it down.

Should teens be concerned?

• Absolutely; pictures and videos of underage partying can be used as evidence.
• Companies are getting smarter about checking out social media profiles to learn more about candidates.
• Personal blogs can get you in trouble. [I once received a resumé with a link to a personal blog, which I followed. It was daily rants about getting drunk, including a recent evening with absinthe.]
• The good news is that social media embarrassments may become like getting a tattoo; when everyone has an embarrassing moment, the stigma goes down a bit. However, too many embarrassing YouTube videos will reflect permanently on your character.

What can businesses do to maintain a good online rep?

• A lot of the same things people do, such as being a good member of the community.
• Use online alerts to quickly identify positive and negative feedback. [I use Google Alerts to push stories and blog posts my way that mention my name or my company name. Most are about that damn football coach who shares a name with me, but occasionally I'll find some chatter about this Rich Brooks.]
• It's important to have a Web site, a blog, and a social media presence. These will help push negative comments off the first page. [Also, you need to use search engine optimization to make sure your sites, and posts, and social media profiles come up first.]
• Don’t get into a flame war with your detractors. Decide if you want to engage or ignore. [Sometimes engagement is best, especially if someone is purposefully or accidentally spreading false rumors about you or your company. Sometimes it's best just to ignore someone who's got a real hate on for you. Engagement then just fans the flames.]

Here are some links:

• 34 Online Reputation Management Tools
• Free Online Reputation Management Beginner’s Guide
• Basics of Online Reputation Management

Web Developers: Is it Time to Really Ditch IE6?

Every Web designer and Web developer I know would answer either:

• Yes!
• Hell, yes! or
• F***, yeah!

to the previous question.

For most of us, Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) is the bane of our existence. You can design the most beautiful site that works well in IE7, Firefox, Safari and across operating systems and then you go and look at it in IE6 and you just want to cry.

On average, it adds 4 to 5 hours of development time or more when it comes to building a Web site, so making sure that the site looks good on IE6 is an investment in time.

So, now that Microsoft has released IE8 can we drop support for IE6?

Traditionally, flyte's guarantee has been that our sites look great on the two most recent versions of popular browsers across Mac & PC, and "degrade gracefully" on previous versions. After all, you can't support every version of every browser; you'd go out of business before your first site was launched. And although it's gotten better recently, Microsoft's lack of compliance with industry standards has made the average developer's life harder than it needs to be.

When I think about the hours of productivity lost because IE6 sucks so much it makes Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme pale by comparison.

OK, maybe it's not that bad, but a few extra hours on every Web site built? It just shouldn't be that way.

Unfortunately, dropping IE6 support may still be a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. On flyte's Web site about 9% of our visitors are still using IE6. For one of our clients, Alaska Fly Fishing Goods, they get 13% of their visitors on IE6. For another client, St. Mary's Health Care, it's a whopping 28%!

Although those numbers will decline as IE8 adoption goes up, it's not going to change overnight. If 10% - 25% of a client's traffic is going to be delivered using IE6 it's impossible to ignore that business. You have to make sure the site "works" on IE6.

So, what can you do?

I would suggest to all Web designers and developers that we attack the problem on two fronts:

1. Start charging more for IE6 compliance. If IE6 is adding 4 - 5 or more hours of production work for the developer, why aren't you passing that time on to your clients? Although we haven't made any decision yet, at some point we're going to have to either stop supporting IE6 outright or giving our clients the option of buying a "premium" package that covers the additional time.
2. Recommend upgrading to IE8 and promoting the link. As a Mac guy I'm not thrilled with the idea of pushing IE8, and of course I'd recommend Firefox, Safari and probably even Chrome over IE8, but better 8 than 6. Tell them it's a security issue. Tell them if they stick with IE6 then the terrorists win. Tell them whatever you need to, but get people to upgrade.

If you have any suggestions, legal or otherwise, to make IE6 nothing more than a war story to tell our kids, please let me know.

Rich Brooks
IE6 Stole My Profit Margin

The Knack - Required Reading for All Entrepreneurs

I just finished The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham. That fact--that I actually finished it--makes it much different than a lot of other business books out there.

First a comment: why do all business books have to follow the same naming convention?

[Clever Title] [colon] [Long explanation of what the clever title actually means]

For example,

• Bold Endeavors: How Our Government Built America, and Why It Must Rebuild Now
• The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes
• Elsewhere, U.S.A.: How We Got from the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, Blackberry Moms, and Economic Anxiety
• Small Giants: Companies That Choose To Be Great Instead of Big (by co-author Bo Burlingham)

Still don't believe me? Check out this list of BusinessWeek's Book Reviews.

But I digress....

The book is a combination of how-to's and real life examples of what it takes to start, grow and possibly sell a business. They talk about how sales can actually be bad for your business, and how important it is to understand the numbers. They talk about the advantages small businesses have over large organizations, and illustrate their points with examples from Brodsky's business and from the many people he mentored over the years.

There's a lot of great information on cash flow, and why small business owners need to pay attention to it. After reading this book I wondered how I ever got my own business off the ground. I think I succeeded despite myself.

There was also a lot about running a sustainable business. I don't know if Brodsky and Burlingham actually ever use that language in the book, but the way Brodsky treats his employees (at least after a while) and the way he views his business as part of the community is something to be admired.

The only negative I can really come up with is that I've been reading Brodsky's Street Smarts column in Inc. magazine for years, and a lot of the stories have been repurposed from that column. If you're not a regular reader of Inc. (shame on you) or specifically Street Smarts, this won't be an issue. Even if you are, there's just too much good information in here to pass up.

Whether you were born an entrepreneur or been downsized into being one, there's a lot of great material in The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up for your small business.

Rich Brooks
Street Smart

Marketing is Your Stimulus Package

You may not be surprised to find out that home sales are down. Car sales are down. People are less likely to go out for dinner, or to the movies, or to buy a new HDTV.

But here's the thing: people are still buying homes. People are still buying cars. In the last month I've seen people eating out, enjoying a movie, and going to see a show. In fact, during my short commute I often see big HDTVs in the windows of the houses I pass.

In other words, the economy has not stopped. People still need your products and services. Maybe not as many as before the economy tanked, and maybe they're taking longer to make a buying decision, but people are buying.

So, who are they buying from?

As the pool of potential buyers dries up, a lot of businesses are taking a wait-and-see approach, or retrenching, or coming up with other euphemisms for putting their head in the sand and waiting for some stimulus package to make everything alright.

Does that describe your approach?

Are people buying from the companies that have curtailed their advertising spending? That have stopped blogging? That aren't putting any money into search engine optimization?

An economic downturn can be a boon for many companies: those of us who realize this is the time to market, to blog, to improve one's search engine visibility. (I'm still not sold on advertising, but it depends on your business.)

As the pendulum swings further into the recession there may be a knee-jerk reaction to cut your advertising and marketing budget. Unfortunately, you'll miss out on the opportunities that are going on right now.

By continuing to market your products you'll continue to get sales in the downturn, and you'll be in a better position to take advantage when things turn around. (And yes, they will turn around.)

Marketing doesn't have to be expensive. Improving your site's search engine visibility, or blogging more often, or sending out a few more email newsletters, or engaging in social media can all be low-cost, high-return ways of staying ahead in a down economy.

Let your competition bide their time and lick their wounds; you should use this opportunity to find new customers and new opportunities.

Rich Brooks
Marketing is Your Stimulus Package

How to Recommend Someone on LinkedIn

Customer testimonials can help you land the sale. Likewise, recommendations from a trusted resource can go a long way towards increasing your comfort level when working with a new person.

Because of this, a LinkedIn recommendations can be a powerful marketing tool. You can then take a LI recommendation and use in on your Web site or other marketing material.

Whether you want to "pay it forward" and highlight some quality work you've received or seen from a LinkedIn connection, or you want to show a satisfied customer how they can recommend you, this walkthrough is just what you need.

Step 1: Find the person's profile on LinkedIn and click on Recommend This Person.

Step 2: Choose the appropriate response to your relationship with this person: Colleague, Service Provider, Business Partner or Student and hit "Go".

Step 3: Complete the short form and write a recommendation for the target of your praise.

Step 4: There is no step 4. Your praisee will receive an email and they'll have the choice whether to show it on their LinkedIn profile page or not. This prevents "recommendations" like:

Rich's halitosis was not a problem in completing the project as we worked virtually and never had to be in the same room together.

Now, go forth and praise!

Rich Brooks
Sponge Worthy