Last week I had the pleasure of presenting to the members of the Cairns Chamber of Commerce. I was asked to speak more of ‘the web’ rather than web sites per se.
This was a relatively easy topic (or so I thought) for me given it is the big issue we try to help our customers understand every day (and our organisation).
I have included the presentation slides below which kind of show some of the message.
The main theme for me was “are you paying attention?”
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My take on the speech to the National Press Club by Ben Self, from the agency Blue State Digital, who managed Barack Obama’s campaign online.
Ben’s speech to the NPC highlighted several important items in using electronic communication, although some might say all forms of communication should follow the same methodologies.
There has been a lot of high level and deep writing about the campaign and how effective the online campaign was for Obama’s campaign.
Here are some key items I picked up from his presentation:
There is no secret sauce.
- There isn’t 1 magic thing or tool to use
- It is about simple, effective use of technology
The key items behind any successful online campaign is to build relationships:
- Regularity
- Be Relevant
- Authentic
- Transparency
- Lower the barrier to entry
- Measure everything
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Over the last couple of days the news is out of the box, that Twitter is considering charging brands (this is still to be adequately defined) for using twitter and possible related services.
Those of us that have been tweeting and observing for a while have wondered what Twitter’s first play would be in commercialising this empowering service.
We all know it can’t be free forever (sadly), but exactly how it would first change its positioning was always hotly debated but never clear.
Our brand your twitter.
So why a brand? Well obviously some of the larger ‘personalities/celebrities’ on Twitter use a lot of Twitter resources, e.g. @GuyKawasaki and his alltop blasts, @stephenfry with his huge following and many fully blown commercial brands.
Whereas a business by definition is not necessarily an individual and many could hide behind the distinction.
Questions and comments are raging across the blogosphere as to what / who would constitute a brand, and how exactly would they be targeted. The obvious assumption is heavy users who are benefitting in promoting their brand or utilising Twitter (either directly or via API) would be charged in some form of user pays model.
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Note> This wasn’t written by me and I received it via email.
I do however agree with some of the sentiments and particularly in how / when we will the populist approach to politics change in favour of supporting the parts of the economy that do matter.
I am posting it here on my blog in search of others comments / opinion. Enjoy/ /Hate the choice is yours:
A Boss Who Tells It Like It Is
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009
To All My Valued Employees,
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One of the lessons I learned last year was that not paying attention to our culture when recruiting, was to the detriment of my business. (see point 3 of Riding across bumpy ground).
Over my holiday this year, I have reflected on how I used to interview staff at an Aussie pub I helped run in London. The other manager and I believed the best way to work out if they were a fit, was to interview them 1 night at the bar when we were ‘soft’ working and fill them full of beer.
We reckoned that you got a much better taste of their real self when they were ‘pissed’ than you did at some mock interview. And the truth of the matter was after we did use that style of interview we got a better fit for our pub. It’s called matching people to your individual culture.
At ireckon, culture is as important as at any other workplace. While we do like attitude and creativity, not all people bring it in the same way. Moreover, not all ways are ideal as the organisation evolves either. We need people that fit in our culture today and will add to it.
So how do I preview / post interview potential job candidates?
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