• How to Inspire More Digital Referrals

This interview gives a great overview of the “More Digital Referrals” email course scheduled to launch in January 2012.

Special thanks go out to Tai Goodwin for helping the chat run smoothly. Tai has curated some of the Tweets during the chat using Storify.

• #SmallBizChat Highlights: Tips for Getting Digital Referrals

You can also read my previous post about the course, or just go sign up. The course comes to you through email so you can read and learn at your own pace and schedule. And to celebrate the launch, I’m giving away some prizes for those people that register before December 31st.

A5c: Remember that digital tools are not replacements for human connection; digital tools are conduits for human connection. #SmallBizChat

— Howard Yermish (@hyermish) December1, 2011

Referral marketing is essentially a “farming” activity, and the Internet excels at farming activities.  Over the last few years, I’ve been formalizing a system that embraces online tactics for creating digital referrals to business professionals. I have two basic goals:

1. I want to share this system with the public. In a small way, I hope that this helps small business people get more business referrals.
2. I want to make the system even better and more robust. To do that, I need feedback and suggestions from a larger community.

Register for More Digital Referrals

Skeptic Alert!

I’ve been witness to countless e-books, seminars and courses where for $29 or $97 or $364, some Internet “guru” (who probably had nothing to do with the Internet in 2005, let alone 1995) will give you exclusive access to their proprietary system (which they rebrand/resell from some other richer “guru”) which will lead to instant riches.

This is not that. If you want to get involved in a get rich quick scheme, this isn’t it.

Instead of a “single golden click,” I’m going to teach you good habits for using the Internet. It isn’t designed to create a Twitter hangover or a Facebook lost weekend. It is designed to be a very efficient use of your time, taking less than 10 minutes per day of your time.

Rather than trying to teach you the whole system at once, I’m going to teach you a little piece each week for 10 weeks. The first lesson of the course starts January 2, 2012. Every Monday morning, the next lesson will be sent to you in an email message, with a link that includes content, video demonstrations, and other helpful resources. You’ll also receive a short reminder later in the week, just to check in on your progress and give a couple of quick pointers or answer a common question.

I’ve decided to give this away for free. Yes, really. All you have to do is let me know where to email you.

Register for More Digital Referrals

See, great referral marketing happens because you actually trust the person and want to recommend that person to your friends. So if you want to “pay” for the course in some small way, then simply share the link with your friends. That is it.

Now for the Shameless Marketing Gimmick

To celebrate the launch of the course, I will be awarding some prizes, mostly in the form of Amazon gift cards.  Some prizes will be at random, but I will be awarding registrants with the most clicked links, and the links responsible for the most registrations. When we break my goal of 5,000 registrants, someone will win a new Kindle Fire tablet.

When you register, your email address creates a unique link that you can share with your network and the website tracks the number of times each link is clicked, as well as the number of people that register using your link. You can register multiple email addresses if you want, but better to use one email address and focus on getting your sharing statistics (clicks and registrations) higher. Good performance will be rewarded and acknowledged.

Just a quick note, when you sign up for the course, I will NEVER sell your email address to anyone. That isn’t what you opted in for, and I won’t do it.

Register for More Digital Referrals

One thing is for certain, when Apple releases new iStuff, my iPhone rings off the hook. “Howard, what should I get?”

So, for the first time, I will be hosting a free 1-hour webinar, “Understanding the Latest iStuff” on Thursday, October 6th at 8pm (EST). Advanced registration is required using the form below. The webinar is limited to 95 attendees and is first come, first serve.

Registration for this event is closed.

While the webinar itself is free, I will ask attendees to make a donation in any amount to Livestrong Foundation in memory of my father, Ira Yermish, who passed away suddenly this summer at age 64. He is my original inspiration for being the gadget guy that I am. The donation is completely optional.

Many of Ira’s friends extend beyond the Philadelphia area. So many people have expressed through email messages, Facebook posts, text messages, and phone calls, extremely kind words about my father, each person with his or her own “Ira Story.” Given my father’s passion for technology, I would appreciate it if everyone could take a few moments to record a short video on YouTube and share the link with me. And if you prefer, you can simply share your story with words in the form below. I’ll be collecting these stories as a tribute to my father to share with our family and friends.

To be more responsive to email, I need the inbox to be the highest priority. Gmail introduced the “Priority Inbox” a while back, and I was initially excited by this feature, but it didn’t solve my problem.

If I could wave a magic wand, only messages that were typed by human senders specifically addressed to me would arrive in my inbox. Other non-emergent messages can wait. In turn, I could respect those notification sounds (on the iPhone, Growl, etc.) as actually being important rather than a constant stream of meaningless beeps and pings. There are certain things that I will absolutely ignore when on my iPhone, but don’t mind reading at other times. I don’t want these messages to clog up the works, let alone interrupt my work or life. In fact, I’d argue that I probably give these messages more attention now that they aren’t in the way of the high priority messages.

See my earlier post for a quick refresher on what Bacn is →

In order to truly quiet the Bacn, I’ll need a way to process email on the server before it goes to my email client. I use Gmail, but you can do the same basic thing with Outlook or Exchange.

Step 1: Create the Bacn bucket by simply creating a new label, “Bacn.” (Labels are similar to folders in Outlook.)

Step 2: Create the Bacn filters. Start by using the existing messages in your inbox. From the message itself, click the downward triangle in the top right of the message. Select the “Filter messages like this” option.

If you prefer to start from scratch, you can click the “Create a filter” link next to the Gmail search box.

You can setup filters for specific email addresses, entire domain names (good for social network notifications), and specific text content. Make sure to do a test search with your filter to see what messages it catches.

I setup the filter to skip the inbox and apply the BACN label.

If you have a cluttered inbox, make sure to click the “Also apply filter to…” checkbox.

When setting up filters, you will find that some are better suited by a particular email address, some could be a specific subject line, and others work based on the text content. By creating filters based on common language used by the email marketing platforms, you don’t have to create filters for every single email newsletter or address. Most people do not customize the standard language that email marketing products create, so we can use this to our advantage. Here is my current list of text filters:

• “having trouble viewing this email”
• “having trouble reading this”
• “Email not displaying correctly?”
• “to unsubscribe or change”
• “receiving this email because”
• “you may unsubscribe if you no longer wish to receive”
• “Please confirm your continued interest”
• “If you want to update your preferences”
• “click here to unsubscribe”
• “You are subscribed as”
• “Change settings via email:”
• “Email delivery powered by Google”
• “To unsubscribe from this list”
• “This email was sent to:”
• “To manage your account settings”
• “To view this email with images”
• “Update your email preferences”
• “View this as a webpage”
• “Instant removal with SafeUnsubscribe” (perfect for ConstantContact messages)

The first few days created a dramatic reduction in the volume of messages going to my inbox. Over the span of about 2 to 3 weeks, I was able to gradually add specific filters for addresses and other text phrases or subject lines. I’ve been able to direct the  majority of the messages to the Bacn folder without false positives. If you get email from someone that also sends email newsletters, using text filters for the common phrases used in email marketing will keep the personal messages going to the inbox, while the marketing messages going to the Bacn bucket.

Gmail let’s you create an unlimited number of filters which you can export/import to another account.

Step 3: Schedule Checks of the BACN folder. Most Bacn email isn’t wildly time sensitive, so schedule a point in the day when you will always process this folder. I give myself 5 minutes for a Bacn check, allowing myself to read a couple of the email newsletters or special deals. The audible timer brings me back to the main work at hand. I also like to scrub through these when stuck on hold on the phone. Since Bacn isn’t particularly urgent, you can stop going through these messages at any point.

Step 4: Trim the fat from your Bacn. As more Bacn arrives directly into its dedicated folder, you will notice collections of messages that you simply don’t care about anymore. Consider unsubscribing entirely to those email messages when possible.

For social network notifications, look through the appropriate settings to reduce those email messages where possible. Some people like getting these messages, but I’m not one of those people. But since certain notifications may actually be time sensitive, you can create appropriate filters to ensure that only these messages show up in your inbox.

Power Move: Trash Old Bacn

As a Gmail user, you may notice that you have a TON of Bacn from months and years past. While it isn’t significantly affecting the amount of storage you have at your disposal, it may be slowing down searches of your inbox. (Rarely do you need to search for some random piece of Bacn from 17 months ago.)

Once you have gotten your filters in action and your old messages have been labeled properly, you can so a quick search in Gmail for older Bacn messages. In your Gmail search box, type in the following:

label:bacn before:2011/01/01

This will bring up all messages with the Bacn label from before January 1, 2011. It’s only two clicks to select everything (first just on the page, then a link to select all messages), and then delete the messages.

Almost Too Quiet

After my very first day creating the first few filters, my email inbox instantly calmed down and my phone notifications stopped annoying me. Messages that arrived in the inbox were almost always from actual humans typing. Perhaps it felt a little lonely without the pinball machine of email notifications.

The process of having Bacn caught at the gate and filtering my accumulated email database was actually quite fun. Hundreds and thousands of messages from past months and years, deleted in quick short strokes. Even though it is digital bits of information, I literally feel a giant weight lifted!

Several weeks into this experiment, I’ve noticed that I’m handling more of the 2-minute emails right away, perhaps Boomeranging the late-night responses to early the next morning. I’ve been able to consistently process my email inbox down to zero, keeping it well under control. I’ve also noticed that when I process the Bacn folder, I read through messages, since I’ve allocated time toward this, rather than it being an interruption.

I still receive plenty of email messages, but my inbox is now quiet, almost too quiet.

But my talk was by no means as funny and clever as Conan O’Brien’s address at Dartmouth University, happening almost at the same time. (We did have many similar themes.)

You can never predict where your paths will lead you, but be the best possible version of yourself along the way.

So, on GDGT, I made a little suggestion. Why doesn’t Apple let me pay $1 to watch the livestream through an iPhone, iPad or desktop app, and donate the money to charity?

Apparently, a few others on GDGT agreed that my idea had some merit. In Steve’s opening sentence to the room, he said that he wished that they could get more people there, but the space only held 5,200. So if he is serious, I ask that he offer a livestream to the ravenous Apple crowd and we will willingly donate the $1 to a good cause.

If you agree, please post in the comments and share this with your friends.

It seems now that “Deal-A-Day” sites are everywhere, focusing on every possible category and location. In fact, the natural direction for Groupon (going public), Living Social, and now Google Offers, AmazonLocal, Facebook, Yelp, even the New York Times is to provide more and more deals. That means more email marketing messages, more cities, more categories, more of more.

So many more deals that it is hard to hold our attention. The deals become less powerful, less remarkable. Too many things are claiming to be special. When everything is special, nothing is.

Last I checked, I can only focus on one thing at a time.

Time for the next big idea.

Sometimes the Tech Gods smile upon me and give me an early look at new things. In this case, I was able to experience the Google Music Beta while reviewing the Motorola Xoom. Starting with my existing Google account, signing in like other Google services, you can select some free tracks to add to your library. This is a nice touch that allows you to experience the service right away without having to wait for your own tracks to upload.

Next, you download the appropriate “Music Manager” client for your desktop machine. While installing on the desktop was simple, the experience on the desktop isn’t wonderful. After the software installs, it allows you to select the source, automatically locating your iTunes library. (You can specify your music folder if you don’t use iTunes.) Then Google Music Beta grabs the whole iTunes library including your podcasts. What if I only wanted certain playlists or genres? I should be able to have some level of control and customization.

Then starts the upload process, which it does in the background. You can adjust the amount of bandwidth used in the application settings, which is a good thing. I was able to set it to maximum when I left for the day so it could upload like crazy overnight. Thankfully, I only connected it to my laptop, which is a small subset of my real iTunes library.

As your music uploads, it appears online in the browser, ready for streaming. Playing tracks is relatively simple, but it requires an open browser on the desktop – there isn’t a desktop client. From the Motorola Xoom, I was able to stream smoothly, and then some of the tracks were available offline. With ISPs looking at bandwidth limits, a stream-only service will push users over those limits, which should be a concern if you find yourself wanting music outside of your WiFi networks.

Sound quality is good, not great. Audiophiles will be able to tell that there is some compression in the audio stream, but it appears to use your actual files as the source. Thicker more complex sound textures can get very distorted and metallic sounding, so this probably isn’t for the classical music aficionado.

Working with the library, you get decent controls, including the “thumbs up/down,” similar to using Pandora. Scrubbing to different positions in the song is practically instant, which is quite impressive. In addition to your own playlists, Google Music Beta allows you to create an instant mix by simply picking a song to start from. Given that it only had a subset of my music (2000 songs), it’s choices were pretty good, similar to what the iTunes Genius Mix would have picked.

You should be aware that you don’t get music, other than the few freebies, from Google; you have to acquire your tracks from somewhere online (legally please) or by digitizing your own collection, before you upload to the service. Potentially Google is making business deals to become a music purchasing service, but that isn’t part of the experience yet. Once a track is uploaded to Google Music Beta, you are able to remove the track from your library by deleting it from Google Music. (I was able to remove the podcasts from my library, leaving only the music left.)

Not unlike the song Hotel California, you upload the songs (check in) but you cannot redownload your own music. Excuse me? This is my music. You made me upload everything, but I cannot download my own files again. Seriously, you have got to be kidding. Perhaps I was hoping for a “digital locker” similar to Amazon’s Cloud Player where you treat Amazon’s storage as a hard drive in the cloud.

What is good about Google Music Beta is that you can have a library of up to 20,000 songs available anywhere you have Internet access, with all of your music available on Android devices. There is no sync. Typically, I will purchase a mobile device (iPod, iPhone, etc.) with extra storage so I can have a large subset of my music library on that device. Google Music Beta would allow me to purchase devices without as much local storage while giving me access to my full library anywhere and from any (Android) device.

So, if Google Music Beta had the ability to download your own tracks, perhaps even as a “I want my data back” bulk process, the service would be completely awesome. Then again, it is beta and it is free. How much should I really expect?

The first thing I noticed was the phenomenal build quality and solid feel. The Xoom™ doesn’t convey a feeling of lightness, but it isn’t a heavy device at 1.6 pounds. Holding the Xoom™ just feels right, at least for my hands. There is a nice soft-touch grippy surface to prevent it from feeling slippery. The Xoom™ sports a dual-core nVidia Tegra 2 chipset with 32GB of storage, 1GB of onboard RAM, a 10.1″ 1280 by 800 LED display and cameras in front and rear. In terms of hardware specifications, the Xoom™ beats the iPad on paper.

Next was to find the power switch. The front of the Xoom™ is completely flat glass, no buttons to speak of at all. So I scoured the sides, found the volume buttons, the connection ports, but no power button. I turned it over, to see the rear facing camera, but nothing was obvious. Pausing for a moment, and convinced that I was not going to need to open the manual, I held the Xoom™ in both hands and just stared at it, thinking, “What would the most natural place for a power button be on this device?”

And then my index finger found the power button, perfectly placed right where your index finger would land if you had just picked up the device. So after a short push, then a long push (the actual way), the Xoom™ sprang to life. From a usability standpoint, this is one of those quirky little things where the first time you need the power button, you have a hurdle, but in every subsequent use (2 to infinity), the button placement works very well. Maybe the solution is a “Where’s Waldo” sticker that let’s you know where to look.

Activating the Xoom™ was trivial: no need to plug into a computer. I simply typed in my Google account credentials, and I was up and running almost instantly. In contrast, the iPad still requires activation through iTunes and you cannot add an iPad to an existing Verizon Wireless account. Verizon treats the Xoom™ like any other device, so you can add it to an existing account for streamlined billing.

First stop was the native Gmail application on the Xoom™. Honeycomb’s Gmail application is the highlight of the device. All of the Gmail features are there and the application is rock solid. I’ve been frustrated using Gmail on iOS (iPhone & iPad) as you have to choose whether the default action is to archive or delete. When I process email, I want to archive some messages, but delete others. Processing email on the Xoom™ while sipping a fresh cup of coffee is more enjoyable than sitting at a desk. Not only is the tablet great for quick responses, but you actually have room to type, save drafts that will be available on any other browser, and even do voice input.

When I first received the review unit, Flash wasn’t yet available. When it became available a few days later, I downloaded it from the marketplace. I went over to the Adobe site to find some “featured” content and so make sure that it was installed. This is where the Xoom™ is supposed to beat the iPad, and I was ready to experience Flash on a tablet. The experience is just okay. Animations play at a seemingly low frame rate. On some sites the sound seemed a bit out of sync. Interactive elements on other sites were clearly not designed for a touch interface. (There is no hover/roll-over state with a touch screen.) Scrolling around the pages got very weird when Flash was present. In my opinion, having a mediocre experience is worse than having no experience with Flash. The Xoom™ has serious horsepower, so the problem is clearly with the Flash plug-in itself on touch screens devices. Perhaps this will improve over time, or perhaps more sites will convert content to HTML5 and forgo the need for Flash content.

Typing on the Xoom™ with the default keyboard is good, but not great. The virtual keys on the Xoom™ are a bit shorter than the iPad and the color scheme is a grey on dark grey. This makes it hard to see what keys you are touching through your own fingers. Auto correct is very good, and the voice input option is a welcome addition to a standard keyboard. You can get alternative keyboard applications for Android, something that isn’t an option on the iPad or other iOS devices. It is possible to thumb type while in portrait mode on the Xoom™, as it is a bit narrower than the iPad.

Taking pictures with the Xoom™ and the iPad is bizarre. It’s like holding up a lunch tray and saying cheese. With the Xoom™, the rear camera is placed in the middle of the device, so you don’t have to compensate for the lens placement like you do with the iPad rear camera. According to the specs, the pictures from the Xoom™ should be spectacular, but in practice, picture taking wasn’t particularly good. The shutter release button requires you to hold the tablet in an unnatural way, making it hard to keep the tablet still. Combine that with the Android camera software not being particularly responsive, and pictures aren’t particularly good. Video is slightly better since you don’t have to time your picture snap, just start and stop.

One thing is certain, having a built in Verizon network makes tablet computing seriously useful. Yes, your local WiFi network will be faster, but the convenience of the built-in 3G or 4G/LTE network is worth the price of admission. Verizon offers the Xoom™ for $599 with a 2-year contract, or $799 without a contract. At first I had thought that getting a WiFi tablet would make sense, and simply pair it with an existing MiFi. This way I could upgrade the MiFi as better speeds came available and the tablet, or phone or laptop would be blessed with the faster network speed. The problem with this is that now you have many batteries to charge, and the devices have different battery life. This means that the moment the MiFi runs out of juice (about 4 hours), the tablet or laptop cannot get on the network. That means that your mobile experience involves juggling battery capacity with multiple power adapters. The simple act of having one device with all-day battery life is worth the price of admission. So unless you aren’t ever going to leave your house, you will probably turn on the data plan and let it run for the life of the device, certainly longer than the 2 year contract.

Looking back on my experience with the Xoom™, I’ve had a really hard time reviewing this product. I really want to like this tablet and there is a lot of “very good” about it. I know that Android is “free” like most of the other Google products. But, the OS drives the user experience and customers don’t want to pay to be beta testers. Shame on you Google! Your partner Motorola delivered top notch hardware with amazing technology that is right on par with Apple’s iPad. Your partner Verizon brings a network that has super fast 4G speeds and amazing 3G availability. But Android 3.0 (Honeycomb) is still clearly unfinished beta software. Even the 3.1 update that was just rolled out still feels like beta software. So unless you decide to subsidize the price of the devices while you “finish” the operating system, your partners may consider competitors like RIM or Microsoft for their next tablet OS.

The decision to get the Xoom™ to market before the iPad typhoon hit required a fully baked version of Android. Motorola and Verizon did their job as expected, but Google still hasn’t brought Android 3.0 or 3.1 into a final release. Two out of three isn’t bad, unless you live in a world where the iPad exists.

If you refuse to buy Apple products, the Xoom™ is an excellent choice, and Honeycomb will get better and more tablet specific applications will arrive over time. But perhaps the smart move for the general consumer is patience. By the time Santa is ready to slide down the chimney, Google might be delivering a finished version of Honeycomb, worthy of our money. Unfortunately for Motorola, other manufacturers will benefit from your “canary in the coalmine” experience. Thanks to Moore’s Law, new products will arrive that will be cheaper and faster.

Disclaimer: I was provided a review unit of the Motorola Xoom™ by Verizon Wireless, which is scheduled for return to the carrier. I have not been compensated by Verizon Wireless other than the use of the device itself. Special thanks to Verizon for giving me plenty of time to try this product and really put it through its paces.

Ironic, don’t you think? So go over to Bing.com and do a search for the word, “Search.” Don’t select one of the terms from the drop-down, just click the little magnifying glass. Here is what you get:

Bing does a nice job showing a variety of options, local and categorized. But notice that Google, (that’s Mr. Google to you) has purchased a sponsored ad for the keyword “search.”

If you go the next step and do your Bing search for the term “search engine,” notice that Google again is purchasing an ad. Unlike Google’s search results, Bing includes itself in its own listing.

Is it a good move for Google to buy keywords on its competitors sites? Probably.

Interesting to note, that both Google and Bing rank Dogpile.com pretty well. Raise your hands if you are a devoted Dogpile user? Anyone?

So either Google doesn’t know how to get good search engine results, or they are making sure that this serves as appropriate evidence in their favor.

(Side note: Many tech journalists are predicting that 2011 is the year that Google has to fight ant-trust cases in the EU and perhaps the United States.)

Internet Marketing On a Dime*
Wednesday, January 12, 2011 * 11:30am to 1pm

Beowulf Plaza
1814 Route 70 – 3rd Floor Boardroom
Cherry Hill, NJ 08002
Graciously hosted by DeYoung Financial Group

It is 2011 and the promise of Social Media has infected the business world. What used to require a web developer and piles of cash can now be done in minutes by anyone with a web browser. Learn how Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr and Foursquare can be used to promote your business online.

(*Dime not required. Guaranteed to upset most Internet development companies. Some assembly required.)

Click this link for event information and registration. I hope to see you there!

We are also very excited for some upcoming guests, including Paul & Stephanie Szklarski, Pam Boyd and Lyn Kremer. It’s just 10 minutes so take a listen.

Here is the short version: If you are waiting for the Verizon iPhone, stop waiting. Get the Droid2.

That isn’t to say that Google’s Android OS is better than Apple’s iOS, rather, the two are different. I’ll refrain from the whole “open/closed” argument surrounding the two platforms; most people don’t care, they just want to use the gadget.

Day 1 with the Droid2

The day started with a delivery from Mr. FedEx. It didn’t matter that I had work to do, I couldn’t resist unboxing the phone, charging it to full, and subsequent play time. Immediately, I noticed that the Droid2 feels great in your hands: the buttons, slide out keyboard, corners/edges, etc. – everything seems well conceived. Compared to holding the original Droid, the Droid2 is more refined.

First step was to configure my Google Apps and Google Voice accounts. This was a relatively simple process (except for typing my crazy long passwords) and all of my email was instantly accessible from the Droid2 as well as all of the calendars and contacts from my Google account. The problem with Google contacts is this: I have a HUGE number of contacts because tons of people email me. Google adds these people to my contacts automatically, but most do not have phone numbers. As far as I could tell, I couldn’t easily filter my contacts to show only people with phone numbers.

First small task was to use the “Car” interface to navigate home, a simple 15 minute drive. Once I had the addresses set (do this before you get in the car), the route it planned was the same one that I typically drive. The voice synthesis was pretty good and voice prompts were timed well. For a free/built-in application, navigation is quite good. It isn’t as good as the TomTom app for my iPhone or a stand-alone Garmin or Magellan device, but these cost significant money and real-time traffic is extra. Once I arrived home, I turned off the GPS to conserve battery.

After dinner, I spent about 30 minutes playing with the Droid2: exploring email, enabling Skype, exploring the interface, and linking Facebook and Twitter to the “Social Network” notifications feature. Once I realized that connections from both Twitter and Facebook were being added to my phone as well, I unlinked them. The Twitter experience wasn’t particularly good and I didn’t want my Twitter contacts into the blended database of the phone.

At that point, the Droid2 showed 60% left of the battery. (Side note, the unit was noticeably warm, but not hot.) I turned the phone off completely for the night. No lights were flashing, no “DROID” sfx, it was off.

Day 2 with the Droid2

The next morning, I powered on the device, turned on the GPS, entered the address of my office, and let it navigate me there. Midway through the drive, I got a notice (that I couldn’t read while driving) that the battery was at less than 10%. Really? Not even 30 minutes with GPS and less than 2 hours total usage and the device was dead? So I turned off the phone completely, and plugged it in to charge it, which took about 90 minutes to bring it to 100% charge when completely off. This seemed very strange, so I decided to repeat the experiment with one small change: I stopped the Skype application from running in the background. Sure enough, Skype turns out to be a battery hog. (Same problem with the Skype application on the iPhone.)

Doing basically the same as the first day, I found that I got around 5 hours of mixed use. You will want to keep the device charging in the car and on the desk whenever possible.

Over the next week, I continued to explore the device. I explored the application marketplace, downloaded applications, browsed websites and in general, made sure that I was comfortable with Android.

A day in the life…

After having ample playtime with the device, I wanted to get true field use. So I forwarded all of my calls to the Droid2, and with a fresh battery, put it into use exclusively for the day. (Yes, I powered down my iPhone completely.)

The call quality of the Droid2 is excellent. Without any prompting, a friend was quoted to say, “Wow, did you get a new phone? You sound really clear. Is this your new cell phone number?” Needless to say, Verizon customers typically tout this single feature as the most important of the bunch. The Droid2 delivers well.
Nothing dropped through the day. Even in my office, an inner office with no windows, calls came through without any problems.

Working with the email was very natural, especially since I’m a Google Apps customer. Everything was instantly in sync with my desktop experience without needing a sync cable.

During the day, I did have to power down the phone a couple of times. Once the touch screen became completely unresponsive, but the phone seemed to still be doing its thing. Another time, the phone seemed to be confused, wouldn’t download email, and actions were taking 10+ seconds to complete. The reboot solved all of the problems, but rebooting is something that I haven’t had to deal with since I traded my Treo 650 in for an iPhone.

I installed enough of my main use applications, which are available on both Android and the iPhone, so that I basically went through a typical day without feeling shorthanded.

I opened up the keyboard a couple of times, but tended to stick with the virtual keyboard more often than not. I just tend to be faster and I’m able to trust the software to assist with the typing.

Overall, the Droid2 made it through the day very well. At no time did I wish that I had my iPhone. I could totally see myself enjoying this phone everyday.

Mobile Hotspot

One of the advertised features of the Droid2 is the ability to use the device as a mobile hotspot. I’ve had a Verizon MiFi for a little over a year and find it very useful, so I was curious to see if I would get similar results for speed and connectivity. The Droid2 was easy to connect to and Speedtest.net gave me a 1.75 Mb/s download speed and .47 Mb/s upload speed. In comparison, the MiFi delivered 1.91 Mb/s download speed and .79 Mb/s upload. I repeated the tests about 5 times and I’m reporting the best speeds for both. Both were tested in my office side by side and the test was run on the same laptop and browser. The MiFi was marginally faster than the Droid2, a difference that can probably be explained by the presence of screens, GPS radios, and metallic enclosures.

Customization

One area that Android particularly shines is its ability to customize the application icons, system widgets and application widgets. I happen to be a person that will meticulously organize the experience to whatever makes me happiest. The Droid2 has 7 home screens for icons, widgets and animated wallpapers. I was able to put my most used applications on the center/default screen, while putting some weather, news and social network widgets on the other screens.

One thing to note, you need instructions to learn how to customize the home screens. Certain things about Android aren’t by any means obvious and you will want to read several tutorials to get more power and control over the device. (The iPhone has a couple of things that require minor instruction as well.)

Touch Screen

Visually, the screen is stunning, very similar to the iPhone4. Graphics are bright and clean. However, being used to an iPhone touch screen, I found that the Droid2 was a little sluggish in terms of response time. It might only be a quarter or half second, but it is enough to slow me down. When scrolling through a list, it didn’t respond as predicted, sometimes selecting and launching an application while I was trying to scroll. Also, the speed and inertia of the scrolling is a little strange to my taste. If you have never touched an iPhone, this might not bother you that much, but the iPhone does this extremely well and it is everywhere in the experience for both platforms.

I noticed a lot of errant touches, often just from wrapping my hand around the device. The touch buttons at the bottom of the screen are just a little too short for my fingers/hands, so when I thought I was tapping the home icon, I was opening the menu for all of the apps, and then launching something at random. Accessing the notifications at the top of the screen (new email, voicemail, text messages, etc.), I often found myself accidentally repositioning screen widgets when I was trying to access the notifications bar.

Physical Keyboard

I had chance to compare the physical keyboard of the new Droid2 with the original Droid. The new version feels much better with its raised bumps and more spacious layout from eliminating the d-pad from the original. I know a lot of people who cannot get used to a virtual keyboard, so the Droid2 keyboard will be very well received for those people.

Virtual Keyboard

I’m very used to using a virtual keyboard and found that I was much faster on the virtual keyboard than the physical keyboard. Android’s word prediction is very good, giving you plenty of words to select.

Camera Quality

The Droid2 has a 5MP camera with LED flash, similar to the iPhone4. The camera does a decent job with two minor exceptions. First, the Droid2 uses a strange aspect ratio for the image, rather than a standard 4:3. Second, photos from the Droid2 seem to lack depth and contain digital noise compared to the iPhone4.

Eagles Mug from Droid2

Eagles Mug from iPhone4

Both of these photos were taken from the exact same point and with the phones using the table for support to minimize jitter. The Droid2 didn’t focus until I tapped the shutter, which caused it to zoom a little, losing the bottom of the image. Please note that both of the full size images (linked) are straight from the phones using the default camera application.

Interface Issues and the Back Button

I’ve used touch screen devices since the late 90′s, including the Palm Pilot, Handspring Visor, Treo 650 and then the iPhone; I’m very comfortable in this environment. Perhaps it is just me, but I never even thought about needing a “back” button. On Android, you cannot live without it. Also, Android has the “extra choices” button to get to all of the options and menu items, sometimes with additional sets of choices. This basically compensates for the differences in screen sizes and configurations, by hiding a collection of choices from the interface. (The iPhone has a standard user interface and screen dimensions as did the other devices previously mentioned, so this wasn’t an issue.)

Also, consider something as simple as the physical “OK” button and a virtual “OK” button. When you unlock the device and enter a password, you end the sequence with “OK.” If you enter the password on the touch screen, the “OK” button is virtual. If you enter the password on the physical keyboard, you tap the “Enter” key rather than the “OK” key, even though the interface says “OK.” This is a minor inconsistency, but if you put enough of these little details together, you realize that Android still has a long way to go before it matures. That said, a benefit of Android is that you actually get updates to the core software, so your phone will “get better” through the course of your contract.

Final Thoughts

The Droid2 is a phenomenal device – if the iPhone didn’t exist, the Droid2 would be king. But the iPhone does exist and shows its interface maturity over Android. One thing to be clear, Android is evolving at a blistering pace and I suspect that time will heal these minor issues, and they are minor issues. The Droid2 is a worthy competitor to the iPhone4 and it is on Verizon. If you are wanting to get a smartphone and you are a Verizon customer, get the Droid2.

First up is PodCamp Philly on October 2/3 at Temple University, an “UNconference” designed for people that just want to learn about blogging, podcasting, social media, WordPress, all of that jazz. Two days packed full of information. Sandy Spadaro and I will be teaching how we create our podcast, 10 Minutes at Exit 4, and recording a live episode. Our session is sometime on Sunday Oct. 3rd, not sure of the exact time yet.

I will be doing TWO seminars on the same day, a morning and a lunch, on Wednesday, October 13th. The morning session is “Internet Marketing 101,” a great all-encompassing workshop for marketing directors and sales people to learn about some of my secret sauce. The lunch workshop is “Facebook Publicity and Privacy,” designed for those business professionals that want use Facebook to promote their business, but need to keep their business and personal lives separate. (Come to both, you will love it.)

On October 21, 2010, the Burlington County Chamber of Commerce is presenting its inaugural business leaders conference at the Enterprise Center at BCC. This event features Jim Rudolf, chairman and CEO of Rita’s (water ice), as the lunch keynote, as well as Todd Allen from Wegman’s, Lyn Kremer of the Philadelphia Business Journal, Evan Marcus (The Wisdom of We), Joseph Rosales (Customer Service is a Contact Sport™), Paul & Stephanie Szklarski (Having Professional Advantage in Sales and Business Development), Pam Boyd & me (Amplify Your Voice). Please see the chamber website for complete information.

On October 29th, I will be presenting a “reloaded” version of the “What in the Heck is Twitter?” workshop, swimming into the deep end of the pool and including content for the new things that Twitter has been doing. (Like the totally new interface, location-based Tweets, user suggestions, Twitter chats, etc.)

Then on November 2nd, I will be co-presenting with Louis Lessig, Esq. “Social Networks For/In Your Business” at the Garden State Council SHRM 19th Annual State Conference & Expo.

And if that wasn’t enough, November 5th is going to be something interesting, I just can’t say what yet.

Friday, November 19th brings a redesigned “Online Marketing Day of Thunder” which only has spots for 10 people. Cost will be $250 for the day-long session and more details will be forthcoming. Contact me if you want to be part of this.

I’m tired just writing about it! I hope to see you at something.

No one wants to be blasted at. When a bomb goes off, we all duck for cover.

Consider for a moment that you run a radio station, broadcasting at 50,000 watts. Any message that you wish goes out into the airwaves. You have full control over the contents of the message. It doesn’t matter whether people love it or hate it, your message is your message.

Howard Stern isn’t that funny by himself. What makes his show compelling is that his guests and callers argue with him and he listens, then responds. Stern doesn’t “blast” out his message; he invites the audience to be part of the dialog, that is, part of the show.

Everyone enjoys conversations, both as participants and as listeners. When you invite a response, interesting things happen.

So how can email marketing create conversation? Email marketing is part of the dialog around your products or services. No one is really interested in reading the same vanilla corporate mumbo jumbo. And we are rarely interested in “canned” content that you purchase from a third-party service. We are interested in the true voice of your company. Don’t just say you have great customer service, talk about how you define customer service. Let this voice be part of your email marketing, as well as your overall communications strategy.

One final point, you cannot force people to be part of the conversation. If you add people to an email marketing list without permission, you are spamming. Create messages, rather a two-way dialog that is worthy of our participation. Then invite people to tune in and be part of the show.

Go ahead and ask me a question, I’m listening.

A couple of weeks ago, I took a look at my schedule of meetings and such and started laughing: on one single day, I had three meetings at three separate diners. As a native of South Jersey, I knew that this was the epitome of the Jersey diner scene.

First Meeting: Breakfast at Diner #1

If you are from Jersey, you know the story. Huge menu with lots of choices. So I ordered an omelet, subbed out the potatoes for tomato slices, and rye toast. It was fine. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing really right about it. Coffee was decent and plentiful. The service was somewhat friendly, relatively efficient, and reasonably accurate. Overall experience wasn’t not particularly good for the money, but they didn’t rush us out and we didn’t have to bus our own table.

Second Meeting: Lunch at Diner #2

Further down the road, another diner, and again, it was fine. Plenty of parking and the restaurant wasn’t particularly busy, but the staff brought a “charming” (ahem) attitude that practically said, “I’m doin’ ya a favor by being here so you’ll get your food when I’m good and ready to give it to ya, got it?!” I had soup and salad, which were both relatively fine, and came with a big basket of bread. Food was relatively cheap and relatively decent. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing right about it.

Final Meeting of the Day: Dinner at the Silver Diner

I was invited to attend a special event that featured Silver Diner co-founders President Bob Giaimo and Executive Chef Ype Von Hengst. After meeting the others at the event, tasting a few nice treats. Bob Giaimo opened the event.

Next up, Ype shared his passion and introduced what we were about to eat.

Looks like we’re not in the typical diner anymore.

I’m not a food critic, but I do enjoy eating. Compared to the two other diners from earlier in the day, there was no competition. This was delicious.

I think that I managed to cram a little bit of everything onto my plate. Simple things like locally sourced tomatoes (I usually don’t even like tomatoes) made the food taste fresher and better. Softer breads, crispier vegetables, and even locally sourced coffee (courtesy of Lacas Coffee from Pennsauken, NJ) made a difference. It appears that Chef Ype has found a way for franchises to source food locally, provide a broad diner menu, and serve food that just tastes a heck of a lot better than the average diner.

Now to be fair, the Silver Diner was having a special event, the top brass was there, everyone was at attention, so of course everything was going to be perfect. So I went back for breakfast a week later, ordered the Farmer’s omelet to test the system: no coupons, no special requests, just an average guy getting breakfast before the business day. (I didn’t even check in on Foursquare.)

Compared to what I typically get from diners in the area, again, this was simply superior. Food was delivered quickly, service was friendly and lacked the “doing you a favor” attitude, and the food was obviously fresh and tasty. But of course, this was going to be more expensive than my breakfast as described earlier, and it was, by about 50 cents.

So why do people in Cherry Hill tolerate the “typical diner” when the Silver Diner is right across from the mall? That’s something I’ll need you to explain to me.

Nope. Just another advertising program. SuperGuarantee is for sale.

So here is what I can figure out. A business registers themselves (by purchasing advertising with an upgraded package) with SuperPages.com. A consumer goes to SuperPages.com, finds a business, and registers a job in advance with SuperPages.com. If there is a problem with the business (that is a customer of SuperPages.com) and SuperPages.com cannot help resolve it, they will reimburse you up to $500.

SuperPages.com is protecting their customers, that is, businesses that advertise with them. It has nothing to do with being “super” like the yellow capes suggest.

Reading through the FAQ on the SuperGuarantee website, we find this wonderful tidbit:

Q: Are you endorsing or recommending the service providers who participate in the SuperGuarantee® Program?
A: No. We do not endorse or recommend any service provider.

Now that is peace of mind.

Of course, they would have never designed a program that truly benefits the consumers. That would have placed their customers at risk. So instead of allowing the community to act publicly and make recommendations based on our social connections, the SuperGuarantee is actually just a fancy graphic on a sponsored listing.

Also, the $500 limit on the claim compared with the actual process required to get the $500 probably isn’t worth your time.

SuperGuarantee Remix

If I was the consultant for this project, I would have recommended that they build something like Yelp, but targeting the residential contractor market. Let the contractors create listings in the directory for free, but you can upsell them on premium services and featured listings. Create a “basic” paid package (really cheap, like $10/month) that gives them tools for statistics and so they can follow-up with their customers to ask for reviews. Like LinkedIn, they can choose whether to show the customer testimonial on their page. The SuperGuarantee is something that they need their customers blessing to “earn” – the more positive reviews they get, the more “super” they deserve.

I would also let customers add the businesses to the directory, although require some approval process before things actually appear. The approval process might look a lot like a sales lead. It would contain the business name, contact information and type of business. SuperPages could then simply contact the company to make sure that the listing is accurate and offer basic and premium upgrades to the listing. If the customer had submitted a positive review, it will be waiting and ready for when the official listing goes live.

Now both the customers and the contractors have incentive to help in the broadcasting of the “SuperGuarantee” concept. Customers will naturally talk about positive experiences, but retain the voice to have negative experiences “heard” by the community. Contractors that do a good job will see the SuperPages listing as a positive marketing asset. If a contractor is really bad, SuperPages can choose to give them the boot.

SuperPages would then have an asset that contains much better data about current and potential customers, which is valuable to the consumer as well.

5,000. That’s it. Once you hit it, you are done. No more.

You probably didn’t realize this limit when you started. In fact, you probably didn’t realize that you had other options that were designed to do exactly what you wanted in a much more efficient manner. Options that weren’t limited to only 5,000.

I’m referring to a problem that some people are facing on Facebook: A personal account can only have 5,000 friends.

But let’s take a step back for a second. Do you really have 5,000 friends? I might be going out on a limb, but I’m guessing that if you are “friending” 5,000 or more people, you are probably building a marketing asset.

The Alternative: A Facebook Page

Facebook pages are designed for businesses, brands, products, organizations, artists, bands, public figures, and all flavors in between. Facebook pages are specifically designed for building a valuable marketing asset.

Using a personal account, you have to “confirm” each person as your friend; using a page, people can just “like” your page.

Using a personal account, you are limited to the number of people that you can send messages to. Facebook wants you to keep the number of recipients low, so you have to break things up into many many chunks. And this looks a lot like spamming behavior which could flag your account for abuse. Using a page, you can send an update to everyone that likes your page in one step. You can even use demographic or location targeting for the update.

If you want someone to help with your marketing effort, you have to share your private login information when using your personal account. Using a page, you can add other people as administrators (and remove them) to post content, message fans, monitor responses and such.

What if I’m Racing Toward That Wall?

This is a challenge, effort is involved, but it is tactically quite easy to do. You can resolve the situation through a few simple steps.

Step 1: Create the appropriate Facebook Page.
Start the process by going to http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php and select the appropriate option. I suggest you browse through each of the options and review the possible choices in each of the drop-down menus. Type in the name of the page, and be very careful about the spelling. Once you name the page, you cannot edit this.

Step 2: Post a status update with a link to your Facebook page.

While this is a relatively simple process, it is important to note that this is an opportunity to ask your “friends” to share your new page. At the bottom of the left-side column of your new page, click the “Share” button and then include a short note that describes the new page and asks people to “like” it.

Step 3: Send a message to your friends with a link to the new page.
Keep the message short and sweet and make sure to include the link to your Facebook page in the message. Facebook will present the link nicely below your message making it each for people to “Like” the page. Unfortunately, you can only send a message to 20 people at a time, a limit that Facebook imposes to prevent spam.

I recommend that you don’t try to message all 5,000 of your “friends” in one day, rather spread out the task over several weeks, limiting the number of people that you are messaging to 100-200 per day. You do not want to have your account flagged for abuse by Facebook and sending out thousands of duplicate messages is certainly a way to be noticed by Facebook.

Step 4: “Unfriend” the people that are really just fans and not actual relationships.
There is no “rush” for this, but now that you have pointed people to the appropriate page, you shouldn’t feel bad about unfriending people that aren’t actual relationships. The worst part of this is that there isn’t a quick way to unfriend people.

The fastest way to do this on Facebook is to click on the “Account” menu and select “Edit Friends.” Facebook will then display all of your friends and pages. Click on the “X” next to each friend that you want to remove. Facebook will prompt you to confirm in case you clicked on someone by accident.

You can also use this opportunity to create a collection of “Friend Lists” which are infinitely useful for maintaining privacy and customizing your personal experience.

There is no prize for reaching 5,000 friends.

Moving forward, when people that you don’t know want to “friend” you on Facebook, reply to the friend request with an edited version of the message that you created in Step 3 above. Keep this message in a text file so that it is easy to copy and paste.

One thing that I haven’t mentioned relates to trust and believability. When I see a person with many thousands of friends, I make a judgment about the sincerity of these connections. Friendship is a two-sided relationship; friends should be willing to help other friends. Perhaps you are too busy with your 4,999 other friends to help me.

Having more than 5,000 people “Like” your business page is a real asset based on authentic requests for permission.

Simple.

One point that I want to emphasize is regarding the email subject line. My simple advice is to make the subject line helpful for both the recipient and the sender. Here is what I mean.

I frequently get email with the subject “Website.” That’s it, just the word website. For the person sending the message, there is only one website that they could possibly be referring to. For me, it is a slightly different story.

But let’s consider a different example. Perhaps you run a tire store, and your customer sends a message with the subject, “Tires.” Just imagine for a moment, looking through hundreds of emails and seeing the subject, “Tires.” Might make you want to scream. If I were emailing a tire store about tires for my car, I’d add some specifics to the subject. “New Tires for 2002 Hyundai Sonata.” I might even go so far as to include my name with it.

When I write this email, most of the subject isn’t something that I need at all, rather it is something that might help the recipient of my message. But consider the reply that might come in a few days later while I’m in the middle of something and see the reply, “RE: New Tires for 2002 Hyundai Sonata.” And now the reply to my original message is much more helpful to me as well. Fast forward a few months when you are searching through email looking for some detail, and your subject lines become extremely valuable time savers.

Here are some of my least favorite subject lines that I frequently receive:

• Website
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Seminar
• LinkedIn
• Contact
• Follow-Up
• Help
• Status
• Hello

So when writing the subject line (and please, do not write email without a subject line), give the recipient just a little extra context – who, what, where and when – to help us all manage our email inbox a little more efficiently.

What are some of your least favorite email subjects that you receive?

Just a quick post to invite you to the Philadelphia Business Journal’s Social Media Summer Camp. Here is the schedule of the sessions:

• Wednesday, June 2nd: Social Media 101 (featuring me!)
• Wednesday, June 9th: Twitter
• Wednesday, June 16th: LinkedIn
• Wednesday, June 23rd: Facebook
• Wednesday, June 30th: Social Media Strategies
• Wednesday, July 7th: Panel Discussion

Each workshop is $25 or you can purchase a session pass for $125. Sessions are from 7:30am – 9:30am at Peirce College‎, 1420 Pine Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102 (Click for map).

For more information and registration, please see the event page on the Philadelphia Business Journal’s website.

Let’s me take a few steps back. Several months ago, I showed up at my BNI business lunch, checked-in on Foursquare to find that Carrabba’s Italian Grill had a “Mayor Special,” a free dessert with the purchase of an entree. So I showed the manager my phone, he raised his eyebrow, but then asked me what I wanted for dessert. And it was delicious.

The following week, I checked in but didn’t bother to ask for the dessert. The week after that, the very nice server asked me what I wanted because she knew I had checked in on Foursquare. So that day, I got dessert. Again, delicious.

I knew that there weren’t many people checking in on Foursquare yet, the network has only recently past a million users. But I had started seeing more people check in at more locations in the area. The small group of early adopters were now being joined by some more people a little further along the curve.

At our business meetings it became a bit of a joke. Here comes Mayor Howard, ready for his dessert. Except I never asked for the dessert and never got the dessert again. I don’t need to eat dessert during the day. It was about the story, perhaps the honor of being the mayor.

Then over the next few weeks, other tech-forward members of the group in non-tech professions started to use Foursquare. They also check in at the restaurant, as well as other local businesses. The competition was on for someone to oust me as the mayor. Sometimes I specifically wouldn’t check in so that my friends might catch me.

Today, I jokingly said to the very nice server, “what’s the mayor having for dessert today?” She went completely ashen. Apparently, her boss had told her to deliver his message: No desert unless I came to the restaurant at a time other than during our weekly lunch there. She felt bad, and I started laughing. I told her that I wasn’t upset at her at all. (Her boss didn’t have the courage to deliver this message to me directly; nice to put the front-line employees in awkward situations with customers.)

But here is the crazy part. Between the four of us early adopters at our weekly business lunch, there are over a thousand people that see our status updates just on Facebook, not including the numbers on Twitter or otherwise. Our BNI group meets there every week and the bill is easily $350 each time, which accounts for close to $20,000 each year in business. (I know that my lunch dues are around $750 per year.) The cost of the one dessert, even if I was asking for it every week, is practically nothing considering the marketing and branding potential.

By checking in on Foursquare, we were doing exactly what Carrabba’s (@Carrabbas) wanted us to do: share our loyalty and eating preferences with our network of friends. And the promise that Carrabba’s made to the community on Foursquare was simple: If you check in more than anyone else, you deserve dessert.

As a small business, my goal is to have loyal fans promoting my services to their friends, reaching way beyond my own contact spheres. Here I was, a regular patron of a restaurant, sharing with my friends about the great food and experiences, no longer embraced, rather put in my place. All for a piece of chocolate cake.

So I’m done checking in at this restaurant, and I doubt I’ll take my family there or say nice things about it anymore. Someone else can be the mayor, I resign my post. In three months I got dessert twice in 12 visits, hardly abusing my status. I have plenty of other things I can share. Instead of everyone winning, we all lose. I’ll get over it, the owner/manager probably won’t care, and the very nice server who does an amazing job every week with our meeting will probably be blamed by her boss if the corporate franchise contacts the local owner about this post. (She deserves to get a bonus instead for making sure that everything runs smoothly every week.)

What did you say about the ratio of the people you follow to those following you?

Here is the thing about ratio. You want to have the ratio of followers (those who follow you) to those you follow as 1:1 or better. If you have 20 followers and you are following 10 people, your ratio is 2:1. New users to Twitter typically have the reverse – 10 followers and following 20 – 1:2. If you are trying to follow tons of people, Twitter “stops” you at 2000 people (a ton) that you can follow. So once you follow 2000 people, you will need to have 2000 people following you before you can follow more people.

That said, you can always follow someone, see if they follow you back, and then drop them and move on to someone else to keep your numbers below 2000 while your ratio nears 1:1. This is exactly what spammers do: they follow you and then immediate stop following you to generate the email, “SomeDude is now following your updates on Twitter…” including the link to their account in case you want to follow them back. Many people “think” they are supposed to follow back people, so they do and the original “SomeDude” grows a following. It is very deceptive and I strongly recommend against this.

There are a couple of things that you can do to combat this so you don’t end up following people with this deceptive scheme.

Strategy 1: Wait and Check

When you receive the email that someone new is following you, wait a bit, perhaps until the end of the day. Then you can go click on the link to view the person’s account. When you are viewing their profile page, look in the right column under the “Actions” header and you you will see the tell-tale indicator: “Message.” If the link to “message” (send a direct message) is there, then they are following you at that moment. If it just says “Block” and “Report for Spam” then the person isn’t following you.

You can do a bunch of these at a time. I suggest looking at the last bunch of Tweets from the person to decide whether you would appreciate following the content from this person.

Strategy 2: Ignore, Wait and Check

If you want to opt-out of the new follower emails, click on the “Settings” link on Twitter, and then click the “Notices” menu item. Uncheck the box for “New Follower Emails” and click the “Save” button. Now you won’t get emails saying that people are following you.

According to your own schedule, click on the “Followers” link on your Twitter profile and review the list. This list will only show you who is currently following you, from newest to oldest. So the people at the top of the list may have just started following you. I typically skip the first few unless I recognize someone. Then I scroll down the list, click on the account links and review from there.

The advantage of this method is that the known spammers will typically be blocked out already, saving you a bit of time.

Strategy 2a: Wait for @ Reply

As an enhancement to this, I sometimes will try to strike up a conversation with someone that looks interesting that has started following me using the @ reply or mention of their account. If they show up as a real people, then I’m more inclined to be interested in following their updates.

Following Sprees

My recommendation is that you don’t go on following sprees unless you are doing specific research for a particular type of person or profession. If you aren’t sure why to follow someone, don’t follow them. If their Tweets don’t interest you, don’t follow them.

If you are new to Twitter, you might find a directory, such as Twellow, useful for finding people on Twitter based on profession, subject and even location. Another method would be to find people that you respect and look at who they follow and engage in conversations.

If you want someone to follow you back, you need to “show up” by engaging in conversations.

Sorry for the long response to what appeared to be a simple question.

In an effort to improve your email marketing efforts, you need to stop thinking about the size of the list and focus on one perfect customer. Consider the following questions:

1. Is your message consistently interesting, or just recycling last week’s email?
2. Is your message time sensitive, timely, or just at the same time as last week?
3. Is your message unique to the character of your organization, or can I find the same content anywhere/everywhere else?
4. Is your message something that I will want to reply to, perhaps with a follow-up question?
5. Is your message worth sharing with my friends, or worth learning the shortcut key for deleting?
6. Is your message saying what you want to say to your perfect customer, or are you dripping and dripping like Chinese water torture?

(Side note on drip methods, email is a natural place for drip marketing tactics, I just recommend that your “drips” be wildly interesting.)

Attention is the only scarce resource in most of our lives. Please don’t abuse my attention.

And a final note, if you don’t understand CAN-SPAM, please go read the FTC’s CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business. In fact, go read it anyway just as a healthy reminder.

I’ve been using TicketLeap for my events for over a year now and I’ve been very happy. It doesn’t matter whether your event is for 5 or 5,000 people and there are no ongoing monthly fees. They are an Internet company, but located locally in Philadelphia, founded by a couple of Wharton graduates. So if you are having an event, give them a try.

Some of the other features are the ability to embed individual Tweets into your site with Blackbird Pie. For example:

Interesting, isn’t it? I knew you’d be excited.

Better still, Twitter is starting to roll out more business specific features, and I’ll be able to answer some of your questions at my seminar, “What in the Heck is Twitter?” this Friday, May 14th from 12p to 1:30p.

So my simple tip is don’t have a printer.

Okay, so this might be total craziness for some of you (okay, most of you), but I tried it for six months. Here was the result.

• Since the printer wasn’t convenient, I relied completely on paperless options. I created documents as PDF files and did many of the same things that the Mashable article suggests.
• I had access to a printer at home, just not at my office. So if I really needed to print, I printed to a print queue. By removing the instant gratification of printing, I found that instead of printing 3-5 versions of a document, I would barely need to print the final version.
• Documents for clients were provided as PDF files. If the client wanted a hard copy, they could print as many as they wanted. If they handed me a copy, I turned it down and used my PDF file on my laptop.
• After six months, I found that I needed the scanner more than the printer. So I purchased a multi-function printer/scanner. One year later, I have yet to go through the first ream of paper. I noticed that my processes are now designed to shred and recycle paper.

Before you toss your printer out the window, try this. Take the paper out of the tray. Just add a small bit of friction to the process and you might be surprised at how few things you really need to print.

Not a big deal, but I generally don’t like toasted bagels unless the bagel has been frozen. Of course, they toasted it and I was too tired to fight it.

It is hard to fight the default behavior. Most people like toasted bagels. The person behind the counter, faced with a rapidly growing line is looking for ways to speed things up, so he skips a step or two. It is only a bagel.

Imagine if you were Facebook working with 400+ million active users and you noticed that most people never took advantage of all of the options that you have painstakingly engineered into the service. The line grows longer and the options get more complicated. So in an effort to speed through the line, you streamline by taking advantage of the default behaviors.

Just another part of Facebook’s slippery slope.

Jobs’ letter could be rewritten from a developer to Apple, and I hope someone takes the time to do just that. Turn this sentence from Jobs: “We cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.” Into this: “We cannot accept an outcome where our apps are blocked from using innovations and enhancements because Apple doesn’t approve.”

Nicely said.

Right now, people are questioning whether the benefits of Facebook (finding old friends, extending relationships, casual communication, entertainment, social recommendations, and the spread of ideas through a viral network) outweigh some of the privacy settings.

You might recall that Facebook began as an entirely closed network. Unless you had a .EDU email address, you couldn’t get an account. The default settings all leaned in the direction of private. Contrast that to today where the defaults for a new user are completely public.

If you are one of the over 400 million active users of Facebook, be responsible and define your own use. Devote the time to understand the controls that you have that customize and personalize your experience. It requires that you take ownership and be accountable.

Most people won’t do this. That is the problem that Facebook should be addressing. Facebook should engineer its interface to encourage users to understand the power of its privacy controls. It might not make short-term business sense, but it might just save them from a mass exodus.

Think back to the dominance of America Online fifteen years ago and MySpace four years ago.

Warning, tech-geek moment: If I were trying to think of a business start-up idea, I’d be creating something that lets people and businesses own and manage their identity with a standard protocol that can run on your own basic web server. The idea is that we (individuals, organizations and companies) can own and control our identity information, rather than trust for-profit companies with our data and ideas.

Last week I watched many people post and re-post about the latest concerns over privacy on Facebook, encouraging everyone to change yet another setting. This was a knee jerk reaction that reminded me of the virus hoax emails that often get forwarded from one person to another.

If you took the time to understand the new feature, and then decided to turn it off, both on Facebook and on the participating sites, I respect your decision because it is informed. If you simply opted-out without understanding why, you encourage Facebook to continue to set the defaults of its new features in ways that might make people uncomfortable.

Two Problems

Facebook gives users amazing granular control over privacy settings, global all the way down to a single status update. The problem is that no one takes the time to learn how to use these controls. Facebook should make this easier to manage and maintain.

Facebook knows that most people accept the default settings. So they are pushing the envelope, trying to become the keeper of the official social graph on the Internet. By default, Facebook wants you to make everything public so they can sell advertisements and make business deals. (They are a for-profit company.)

Instant Personalization

The program that everyone was reacting to is a pilot program called “instant personalization” and it is currently with three partners: Microsoft Docs.com, Pandora and Yelp. Imagine that you can see restaurant reviews on Yelp written by your Facebook friends, and Yelp is able to show you this information even though you aren’t yet connected with these people on Yelp itself. This is what the “instant personalization” is for – your friends travel with you to other sites and you benefit from a relationship that is already defined on Facebook.

The opt-out process is two steps, one on Facebook and the other on the partner site, if you happen to use that site. So, if you turned off instant personalization on Facebook but neglected to turn it off on the partner sites as well, you probably skipped a step. Go back and read the details, then finish the job if you are so inclined.

You may have heard that according to Morgan Stanley, “the mobile Internet is ramping faster than desktop Internet did, and we believe more users may connect to the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs within 5 years.” And as futuristic as it may sound, you might already be carrying around a device that would make Gene Roddenberry drool feel validated that his futuristic vision of the tricorder has come true.

What makes an App an App?

An App is nothing more than software running on a device, like a desktop computer or smartphone.  Traditionally, to install software, it was a complex process. Put in a disk, run a program, answer questions you don’t understand by clicking “OK” a lot. If there’s an update to the software, you download and install the patch. Then if you want to uninstall it, it is a whole process and then you have to clean out all of the garbage left behind.

But the idea behind the “App Store” is that software installation, updates, management and removal are all amazingly simple: 1-click and done. It is a very consumer-friendly process, no longer requiring a “techie” to manage or maintain the process. Apps are also often “single purpose” tools that are task oriented. “I need to do THIS so I have an App that does exactly that.” The concept isn’t new, just the technology to make it seamless from end-to-end is now widely available for average consumers at reasonable prices.

Open and Closed

When thinking about the mobile platforms, one issue that comes up is whether the platform is open or closed. Most consumers don’t quite understand this, so let me explain.

In a closed environment, there is end-to-end control of the entire system. Companies control the distribution and sale of the applications, which will be deemed “safe” or “approved” with the hope that this leads to stability (fewer crashes) and overall consistency in the user experience. I can pick up anybody’s iPhone and the experience, other than different apps, will be the same as my phone.

In an open environment, you have the ability to “tweak” or customize. Developers can create applications that do anything that the devices and operating system will support, which can lead to amazing innovation and creativity. But developer ability and code standards will run the gamut, from really great to awful. The overall experience of the device can be compromised, resulting in slowness, crashes, freezes, and restarts. And the experience from device to device and user to user will fracture as the result of different versions of the operating system and different features of devices.

Mobile Device Use Cases

What really interests me (and hopefully interests you) is precisely why a mobile device like an iPhone or BlackBerry can make your work life better: more productive, more flexible, more relaxed, etc. So let me give you the basics.

Mobile device Instead of a desktop computer – Both can effectively do the same thing, but you would rather use a mobile device.

Mobile device to Extend a desktop computer – You use the desktop computer as the primary application, but the mobile device can access information from the desktop and provides some or all of the same functionality.

Mobile device allows New Functions impossible with a desktop computer – the combination of portable, hand-held, phone, SMS, GPS/location, Internet-enabled, camera equipped, battery powered, bluetooth, WiFi, motion sensor, voice recognition, speakers, microphone, music player, push notifications, etc. provides functions in combination not easily possible with a desktop or laptop computer.

Mobile device allows a Quick Check, Convenience or Capture – checking of email, snapping photos, voice recording, anywhere access to the Internet and even getting push notifications that allow your brain to deal with the “If I knew that this was happening right now, I could resolve in 11 seconds” problem.

Time Kill Central – mobile devices have delivered tons of games which can be very fun and extremely addictive. Clearly these are not for business productivity, but sometimes you do need a mental break.

Application Categories

Now since there are close to 200,000 applications, I’ve broken things into specific categories and I just want to talk about one or two specific “Apps” in each category. There is no reasonable way that in the span of a single post I can be comprehensive, but I want to give you some starting points to go search the “App Stores” for your own favorites.

Also note that in this post I focus on the iPhone because that is what I have in my pocket at the time of this writing. However, many of the same or similar applications are available (or will be) for the Android and other platforms.

Phone Power Tools

• Skype uses your existing data network (WiFi or 3G) to make VoIP calls. Verizon had a press release about this a couple months back and Skype is showing up on all of the mobile platforms.
• Line2 gives you a second number for your cell phone, especially useful where your 3G signal is weak but you have available WiFi. It can turn an iPod Touch into a cell phone in a WiFi environment and with the microphone enabled earphones.
• Free Conference Call allows you to manage conference calls, see/manage participants, etc. So if you use Free Conference Call for your conference calls, go get this app.

Productivity

• There are a lot of task list applications. ReQall goes beyond a simple task list, rather it is a voice enabled memory aid, that will transcribe your voice, and remind you about things to do when you are at specific locations. It also helps you remember things that you might have forgotten about. See David Pogue’s video review of reQall.
• Evernote is probably the best cross-platform digital junk drawer anywhere. The free application gives you desktop and mobile access to the same database. Evernote will scan images for text (even hand-written) and attempt to index it for search.
• Dragon Dictation allows you to start speaking and it will convert what you say into text. You can then copy/paste into other applications.
• ZipNote makes sending yourself an email much faster. You just open the app and type your message. It fills in a time-stamp in the subject line and pre-configures your email account information. Yes, you can do this with the built-in mail application, this just saves a bunch of steps.

Desktop to Mobile and Back

• Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite gives you access to your Microsoft Office documents (among others) and can connect with multiple cloud services. You can create new Word and Excel files, and open/view PowerPoint, PDF and other file types.
• For remote desktop use, you can either go with Citrix Receiver or LogMeIn Ignition depending on your specific corporate network setup.
• Salesforce Mobile gives you most of the goodies (dashboards, companies, contacts, calendar, lead conversion) that you would want from Salesforce in a native application.
• Time Master + Billing + Quickbooks gets you all of the reporting, invoicing, import/export, etc. that will extend Quickbooks data to your mobile device. Remember that you won’t be looking at live data and you will have to sync each time you get back to the office. Still, you are able to track time for clients, projects and tasks and the timers keep running even when the app isn’t.
• SplashID helps you manage your passwords, credit cards, accounts, and such in a central encrypted application. It has versions for Android, Palm, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Nokia Series 60 and desktop versions for Windows & Mac.

On the Road Again

• If you use a car for business, Milebug should be required issue. It tracks the mileage for your trips, allows you to track different cars, save frequent trips, save presets for frequent locations and trips, and easily email reports for specific date ranges. You can include expenses related to the trips as well.
• Hoover’s Near Here gives you location based results for standard Hoover’s search, showing potential customers right in the area. LeadTurbo does the same basic thing, but with a different database.
• Tripit is a combination of website and mobile application. You forward your travel plans via email to TripIt and the website organizes everything for you, and the mobile application gives you access to the information plus some added goodies. They have a pro account ($70/year) with notifications and alternate flights, point tracking, and sharing with select people.
• Yahoo Sketch-a-Search lets you draw a shape on a map and then it will show you business results in that area. You can then do a bit of filtering by categories. The application is a bit of a gimmick, but useful when in unfamiliar areas.
• Trainboard is a simple SEPTA application that shows when trains are coming at a specific station and how late they are. Very simple to select your station using your phone’s location functionality and the train schedules work without a network connection. Trainboard does this one thing exactly right. It is simple, fast, and useful, and costs less than the price of a fare. (Please note that the developer provided me with a code so I could download this application for free in order to try it.)
• WorldCard Mobile is a business card scanning app. Process to scan and correct works nicely (some cards scan better than others), but the awkward part is when you would use it. Imagine being in a public situation, “This is my last card…” so you quickly scan the card and then go into edit mode. Desktop versions of business card scanners allow you to do stacks and stacks and you have a full keyboard to make changes and corrections. I used WorldCard Mobile a couple of times at the beginning, but rarely find the need to use it.

Additional Resources

Double Twist (PC & Mac) gives you an iTunes experience for devices other than iPhones. It syncs music, videos, etc. and converts videos to compatible formats. It offers Amazon MP3 store support and it is free.

If you use your iPhone as much as I do, you might find that your battery doesn’t quite make it all the way the day. I always have a Mophie Juice Pack in my bag, which gives me an extra battery in the form of a case. Slip it on and it starts charging. It holds a charge for well over a month, so you don’t have to use it all of the time and worry weather you will get battery life. I especially like that I can charge it separately from the phone itself.

Since I’m on AT&T and I don’t always get good coverage (ahem). The MiFi Mobile Hotspot gives Internet connectivity to my iPhone, my laptop, and others at a conference table. Basically, you take one of the broadband connect cards but instead of connecting it via USB port, you put it on the table and up to 5 people can connect via a standard WiFi connection. I’ve used it to make Skype calls when the “map for that” wasn’t as good as hoped. There are new 4G versions from Sprint coming out over the next few months with faster connection speeds, but my MiFi has been very reliable and reasonably fast.

So, what are your favorite business apps for your smartphone?

Sorry, Jennifer. No more orders from me.

I’ve always had a quote: “Water is for drinking, viewing and bathing.” I guess my poor vision has kept me out of the pool. Once I’m allowed, perhaps I’ll try a few laps.

That said, I hope if any of you are considering getting LASIK, you take a look at my doctor (also my client), Dr. Cary M. Silverman, M.D. of Eyecare 20/20. In working for him, I’ve researched his competitors far and wide. Dr. Silverman is a rare gem in this industry and I trust him with my vision.

And a special thank you to everyone who has reached out to me with words of encouragement. It means a lot to know that your friends are thinking of you, if only for a moment.

Spring allergies certainly affect people in lots of ways and for me it has been my eyes. Now add a contact lens into the mix. This means working in front of a computer, driving a car, riding a bike, or simply looking at someone across a table aren’t “comfortable” actions.

Last year my solution was to wear my glasses for most of the Spring. I hate wearing glasses.

Just another reason that LASIK is really going to change my world. A lot of very simple things add up to give reasons to this profound change.

I’ve had all flavors and sizes of glasses and contacts, some good and some garbage. My latest contacts, Acuvue Oasis for Astigmatism, have been excellent: long wearing, very comfortable, good vision, and almost zero maintenance fuss.

However, I spend many hours in front of a computer screen, so inevitably my eyes get tired and if vision is even a little sub-par, I get minor headaches. I’ve never had really great vision with glasses, I’ve had better luck with contacts, but I’m simply tired of fighting with this.

So next week, I’ll be changing my approach: LASIK here I come.

Right now, I’m both excited and scared. Fortunately, I’m working with a great eye surgeon, Dr. Cary M. Silverman M.D. of Eyecare 20/20. It is a bit of a drive up to East Hanover, NJ for the procedure, but these are my EYES that we are talking about.

Permission on Twitter is strange.

You start following me. And then someone else. And another.

Paranoia strikes.

People follow other people for so many different reasons on Twitter. For me, if I choose to follow someone, I don’t expect an automatic follow back.

That said, if you do start following me on Twitter, at least send me an @ reply and say hello. Otherwise I might not have any reason to follow you back.

Experimenting with a tweets of the week post, I think that I’ve found a format that grasps the random tweet with some of my personality.

I contributed to the GoPetFriendly “Do You Speak Pet-Speak” contest: [View]

Do you speak pet-speak? – http://bit.ly/c0xFBh #contest – my contribution was “yapsolutely”

I posted about Patrick Flanagan: [View]

From the files of VERY COOL – check out this composer making drum music with a Wii remote – http://bit.ly/cxHzjd

I celebrated the return of Rick Astley’s infamous video link: [View]

Okay, so I used to have the hair like this in the 80′s, but never the coat or the dancers. http://bit.ly/cxSyR

I made a suggestion to Conan: [View]

@ConanOBrien wondering if you are going to produce a show straight to the Internet. I’d subscribe.

I stuck up for a friend on Twitter: [View]

@RidePATCO What’s up that has @jerseyshorejen upset?

I tasted my own medicine: [View]

Spent the day working on my own website for a change. Almost there, but still need to make my content better. Tastes of my own medicine.

I posted a rare quote: [View]

Quote from the Age of Google: “Search first, ask questions later.”

I asked you to mark the date for a special “Bark in the Park” game: [View]

Mark your calendar for Sunday April 25: @TrentonThunder is doing the “Bark in the Park” and @GoPetFriendly will be there with a group.

My client got mentioned on Lifehacker.com: [View]

Did you see that @GoPetFriendly got mentioned on Lifehacker today? http://bit.ly/dx1Lwb

I got soaking wet, and checked in at a kids party using Foursquare: [View]

Still soaked from the rain, but another weekend, another birthday party. (@ International Sports, Skating & Fun Centre)

After watching, I immediately thought back to the Honda “Cog” commercial, another beautiful example.

And if you like this kind of this, how about a nice “Falling Water” cocktail…

This one, Sticks and Stones, is rather impressive given that everything is setup in nature.

And let’s finish this post out with MythBuster’s Holiday edition Rube Goldberg machine.

What are your favorite Rube Goldberg machine videos?

The argument presented is important, especially for the future of journalism. Plain and simple, the advertisements support the sites and when you block them, the advertisers don’t see the investment in Ars Technica as worthwhile.

But very important to notice: Ars Technica offers a paid version of their site which does not have ads. So if you care about the content and don’t want ads, you have an option to be a paying subscriber.

So think through this a bit. If you are willing to pay for content online, should you still have to endure the advertisements? Perhaps this is what upsets people so much. If the content is free, I expect to be advertised to. However, if I pay for online content why should I tolerate the advertisements. In the move to online, perhaps more sites should consider the model that Ars Technica presents.

Here is the gist of the article. Guy with an iPhone used an application to snap a picture and the application overlays a “ghost image” on the photo. He submitted the photo and the UK’s Sun and Daily Mail newspapers ran with it. Now they feel a little bit silly.

News organizations have a journalistic responsibility to readers to check the facts. Otherwise readers will stop trusting and go elsewhere, regardless of the medium.

From the Official Google Blog: Stars make search more personal

We’ve long believed that personalization makes search more relevant and fun. For nearly five years, we’ve been tailoring results with personalized search. Today we’re announcing a new feature in search that makes it easier for you to mark and rediscover your favorite web content — stars.

What this means is that search engine results are very different from person to person. Google gives you the tools to make your search experience better. Stars is clearly there for this particular use case: You find a site one day, give it a star because you want to remember it, and then days/weeks/months from now when doing a similar search, your starred results are given priority. It is a great tool that improves your personal search experience.

That said, it is harder and harder to find the silver bullet that will get your business website onto the first page on Google, especially if you are trying to be first for everyone globally. Google is now (and has been for a while) delivering results based on your IP address, geography, and in some cases, social connections. However, on the local level, it is getting easier for smaller businesses to be relevant online in the same ways that they are traditionally relevant.

The new date is Saturday, April 24, 2010 from 9am-4pm. Hopefully it will not snow at the end of April.

The second video shows Patrick performing/improvising with the instrument.

If you know where my brain is, you can figure out why this is SO AMAZINGLY COOL!

SunGard is looking for a CEO for Availability Services – http://bit.ly/axDOzg – Go ahead, make me an offer SunGard.

After a couple of posts back and forth between @SomaCowGeoff, I suggested a feature for Tweetie to it’s developer: [view]

@atebits Great idea for Tweetie feature… allow me to see Tweets of those that I follow within a specific radius. (Help from @SomaCowGeoff)

I asked the Weather Channel for mercy: [view]

Hey folks at the Weather Channel, enough with the snow for the month. Please nothing until March. Send it to New Mexico, much funnier there.

I shamelessly promoted my seminar: [view]

“Online Marketing Day of Thunder” – http://bit.ly/1cuHll – First person to use the code “THUNDER30″ when registering saves $30. Go!

I welcomed a friend and seminar attendee to Twitter: [view]

Welcome to @kenkelllaw, a Twitter newbie from my seminar this morning. Hey, say hello to the “attorney that makes house calls.”

I replied to @nametagscott‘s fill in the blank: [view]

@nametagscott You don’t need permission to spam the heck out of people that don’t care about you. You can get hate for free this way!

I congratulated Chad Hedrick, one of the Olympians who was given free LASIK by Eyecare 20/20, on his bronze medal: [view]

Congratulations to Chad Hedrick on a Bronze Medal! One of the athletes that @LASIKfortheGold treated… Awesome.

I retweeted an article link from Frank Canna: [view]

RT @MirrorFinish Honestly, there’s more to buying a new car than just signing the papers! http://tinyurl.com/yzvxqk9

I shared a thought: [view]

Remove the term “Email Blast” from your vocabulary. No one likes to be hit by shrapnel, even if it is digital.

Perhaps out of sheer morbid curiosity (or that these people could be potential clients), I let the emails continue. Drip, drip, drip. I could easily unsubscribe, but I wait to see if the company decides to actually do something interesting. Usually they don’t. And they don’t for a very long time.

Week after week, the same tired, boring content. Over and over and over again. What a waste of pixels. Even worse are the newsletters that pack so much content into the message or provide no mechanism to respond to the content. Seriously, I just don’t get it. Once, just once, read your own email as someone who doesn’t care about you yet.

Here is the problem: someone somewhere convinced you that the person with the biggest email database wins. You fall into that trap rather than doing something worthy of attention.

Here is my suggestion: Only add someone to your email database that asks to be on the list. If this means that no one wants to subscribe, perhaps you should rethink your email marketing strategy.

Since you probably won’t trash your existing list, why not create a new list with people that asked to be there. Now change the message content for each list. To the big list of people that don’t know you, invite them in. Talk about why you are worthy of attention. To the small list of people that like you, engage with them rather than broadcast to them.

And remove the term “Email Blast” from your vocabulary. No one likes to be hit by shrapnel, even if it is digital.

On the surface this stinks. Especially if you are a song writer, a band or the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).

This doesn’t mean that you stop selling the music. It just means that you cannot bank on it. If all that someone wants is something to listen to, they don’t need to pay for anything. But people like to “connect” with the music that they listen to.

The Grateful Dead had it right: “Please bootleg our concerts. In fact, here is an output from our mixing board. We are never going to play it the same way twice.”

That created loyalty and love for the group. Enough loyalty that people (Deadheads) would buy albums, t-shirts, concert tickets, etc. for any price. The purchase of anything “Grateful Dead” was an expression of love for the group, not just a purchase of a t-shirt or CD. In fact, the Deadheads would follow the band around from show to show.

So imagine for a moment a local band. They have a few hundred followers on their Facebook or MySpace page. So they call the owner of a restaurant and say the following:

“We’d like to do a show at your place. Don’t pay us to play the gig, rather give us 20% of the bar revenue and donate 20% to a local charity. And we will give you 20% of the merchandise and CD sales and we will donate 20% to charity as well. We’ll bring our fans.”

What the band should realize is that its real assets are loyalty and love from its fans. The bar or restaurant is a place to monetize it and a place for the fans to express their love. The band can bring hundreds of people to a usually barren place without any financial risk to the bar or restaurant.

Everybody wins.

And just for a moment, think about how The Grateful Dead would have used Facebook and Twitter. A lot can be learned from the way they connected with their followers.

So if you are the band in the above scenario, ask people that come to the show for their email address and send them an MP3 file of the show. Or even better, find one of your fans that wants to be your ambassador and can organize this for you.

Update: Here is an article from The Atlantic Magazine – Management Secrets of the Grateful Dead