What Should I Do With All These Contacts?

by Nathan W. Burke on November 18, 2008

So, I have literally hundreds of business cards that I’ve collected from my time at matchmine. And since I’m now doing both freelance and contract work, I’m wondering what’s the best way to use my contacts. Here’s a thought I had:
Given the fact that I HATE getting spammy, list-like emails from people and companies, I don’t want to just add everyone’s name to Plaxo and enter them as contacts. I’d also love to be able to create a database of people I’ve met (you can see the inherent conflict here, right?). So, I was thinking about putting together one huge contact list with everyone on the pile of biz cards I have. Then, I’d send out one email that says the following:

Hi. I’m Nathan Burke.
You’re getting this email once and exactly once because I have your business card. As the web community evangelist for matchmine, I met you. Most likely I met you at Podcamp Boston or the Web 2.0 Expo in New York. Now that matchmine has closed its doors, I’m trying to pull together a list of people that wouldn’t mind getting emails from me periodically.

So, instead of asking you to reply and let me know if you DON’T want to be on my list, I thought I’d do it the other way. If you’re someone that wants to stay in touch with me, please reply and let me know that. Otherwise, I promise: I won’t send you email again at this address.

Like everyone else, I hate getting spammy emails, and I don’t want to be that guy. But I really do want to stay in touch with people that I’ve been fortunate enough to meet and talk to at the various events I attended over the last few years.

So, if you want to stay in touch, feel free to email me back and I’ll put you in my address book. I’m not planning on sending out a newsletter of any type or anything like that, but I definitely want permission from anyone that ends up in my contact list.

Thanks so much.
-Nathan
http://blogstring.com
http://www.nathanwburke.com
nathan.burke@gmail.com

What do you think? Is this the way to go, or will people hate the fact that I’m sending them a big bulk email regardless of the fact that I have their business card? I’d love to hear any suggestions. Thank you!

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Video Post- Gmail Video Chat and Twitterank/Twitter Grader

by Nathan W. Burke on November 13, 2008

Okay, so I’m still trying to figure out this whole video thing and I’m not entirely comfortable with it. But I think this format is at least a step in the right direction. This is just a quick video talking about exactly two things:

1. Gmail Video Chat

2. Twitterank and Twitter Grader

So, here goes:

Related Links:

Twitterank Creator Speaks

Twitterank.com

Twitter Grader

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Video Podcast Episode 1: Managing Expectations

by Nathan W. Burke on November 12, 2008

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SocialMinder- Bait and Switch

by Nathan W. Burke on November 10, 2008

Last night I got an email from a old co-worker inviting me to check out SocialMinder, which said:

SocialMinder is an online assistant that helps you maintain relationships with your LinkedIn network.

I thought that you might appreciate a free invitation to the “closed” alpha test of SocialMinder.

SociaMinder:
* Scans your email headers and maps them to your LinkedIn network
* Identifies relationships that need strengthening
* Helps identify recent business news to discuss with each contact, no matter how out of touch you are
* You get weekly updates identifying top opportunities to build a better network

I have arranged for you to get a priority account;
1) Go to http://www.SocialMinder.com , and
2) Click on the green button (‘sign me up’)

You are on the priority list, but your space is only held for 3 days.

And the price is FREE…

Hope that it works for you!

Since this came from someone I knew (and someone that has sent me beta invites in the past), I decided to go check it out. You enter your gmail username and password, and SocialMinder tells you how long it’s been since you’ve contacted everyone in your gmail address book.

I then was brought to this screen:

If you can’t read what’s in the yellow box, it says:

Click here to upgrade to full version for free – just answer a few questions in our Alpha phase questionnaire. The full version helps you manage all of your contacts, and checks for contact updates regularly.

Oh, cool. I can get an upgrade to the full version just by answering a few questions in the Alpha phase questionnaire, right? I can answer a few questions. No biggie.

So I click. And here’s what I see:

No problem. This one’s easy. For some reason I see the following at the top:

Free Trial Upgrade- Step One of Two

But that’s okay.

So I answer the questions and click OK. Here’s what I get:

Yup, you read that right. Here’s the line:

To get your free full trial upgrade, you must select 15 friends to be sent a pre-approved invitation to try SocialMinder.

So the third step- which wasn’t mentioned at the beginning- is spamming 15 of your friends.

My Point:

I have no problem with services trying to get users to spread the word. It not only makes sense, it’s essential. But in user acquisition as with everything else, you have to manage expectations. And as someone who just ran through this process, I’m left feeling cheated. I feel like I wasted my time, and I’ll never go back to the service again.

Harsh? Probably. But I’m just pointing out how easy it is to make someone feel cheated and angry when promising one thing and giving them another.

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Using Social Media In Marketing: Goals, Strategies, Tools & Execution

by Nathan W. Burke on October 31, 2008

Over the last few days, I’ve had a lot of time to think. Between talking with recruiters, networking, and doing freelance work, I’ve still found a big chunk of time where I’ve been alone with my thoughts. And when that happens, I tend to get ideas for blog posts. This one came to me while driving, so I had to write down my thoughts on the back of an envelope which still sits in my passenger seat.

While trying to figure out my next move, I’ve been asked the following obvious, yet terrifying question many times: “What do you want to do?” It’s usually followed by “Either way, you still want to stay in social media, right?” And of course my answer leads me to an unstructured, yet passionate diatribe about social media marketing and what that actually means. This post is my attempt to explain my answer in written form. You’ll have to just imagine me flailing my hands wildly to try to convey my enthusiasm.

When it comes to the role of marketing at any company, there are four words that pop into my head:

  1. Goals
  2. Strategies
  3. Tools
  4. Execution

These are, in order, the four things needed to accomplish anything in marketing, whether you’re a startup, a chimney sweep, a presidential candidate, or a shower curtain hook salesman.

Goals

We begin here, as without goals, what’s the point? If you don’t know what you’re trying to do, you certainly can’t come up with a strategy to accomplish it, you can’t decide on the right tools to do it, and you can’t put it all together to execute. It’s just not going to happen.

So, what are you trying to do? Are you interested in selling 1000 units? Are you trying to bring your userbase from 10 to 10,000? Are you trying to position your firm as an expert in wild badger capture and removal in the Northwestern Maine market? Good. Write it down. That’s your goal. You’ve completed step one. You’re on your way, sports fan.

Strategies

Now you’ve got your goals and you’re ready to get moving. It’s time to come up with a strategy. You’ve determined that you need to increase your user base (or any of the other examples above). So how are you going to do that?

Let’s put a strategy together. Going with the user acquisition example, let’s ask some questions:

  • Why don’t we have the number of users we want right now?
  • Is it because people don’t know about us?
  • Is our offering compelling enough?
  • Are we doing a good job at describing our benefit?
  • Have we done a good job at cultivating passionate users?
  • What are we lousy at?
  • Have we asked our current users about our pain points?
  • Have we implemented sufficient feedback mechanisms to address what our current users have said about us?

Once you’ve addressed those and about three dozen other questions, it’s time to devise a strategy to both address what you haven’t done and take advantage of opportunites you haven’t tried yet.

Again, running with the “we don’t have enough users” theme, let’s say we’ve decided that we don’t have enough users because no one knows we exist. So our strategy is this:

We’re going to do an awareness and promotion campaign to let the world know we’ve got a great service. We’re going to leverage our current user base and we’re also going to reach out to people that write about services similar to ours to let them know we’re out here. We’ll be clear and specific, and we’re not going to overburden them with marketing buzzwords. The goal of this campaign is to increase traffic to our sign in page, increase conversion, and finally turn casual users into active members.

Tools

Would you look at that? You’ve got a strategy (btw, I’m greatly simplifying the process here, as it is a blog post. this post is getting long even for me). Great. Now it’s time to see what tools are out there that will help you satisfy the objective.

To me, this is where social media comes in. Because when you really think about it, the collective “social media” is really just a series of communications tools that- when used properly – can help you engage with the people you need to reach to satisfy your goal.

So, in the above example, is facebook a good idea? Maybe. Twitter? Could be. StumbleUpon, diigo, digg, reddit, Zemanta, wikis, friendfeed, flickr, vimeo, YouTube…..? Whoa, killer. I’m not a frog, you’re not a bunny rabbit. Let’s not jump ahead.

Look at all of the tools available, and evaluate them to see if they’re right for what you’re trying to do. There is nothing more sad and drepressing than a blog that hasn’t been updated since the first post. Figure out what you’re willing to do, what fits your strategy, and what just doesn’t feel right. Then…..

Execution

Armed with your goals, strategies and tools, get out there and do it. Find out what works. Find out where your audience is, and talk to people. Look at what produces results and figure out how to make the most of it. Figure out what is a terrible idea and learn from it.

And one thing I should absolutely mention is this: measure everything. Become a google analytics addict. Use something like NuConomy or a paid service like omniture to supplement your top level analysis of how the campaign is going. Figure out who’s talking about you using things like Google Alerts and Twitter Search. Get all the information you possibly can, and dive into the data to find out why people come to your site, where they bail, what pages succeed and where your gut is wrong. Numbers don’t lie. Get in there and get under the hood.

So, that’s my 15 minute diatribe that serves as this week’s glaring oversimplification of marketing using social media tools. Hope you have a great weekend, and if you’re a company looking to use this advice, let me know. I may just know a guy that has recently been dropped on the job market.

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Finding A Job Using Social Media Tools

by Nathan W. Burke on October 29, 2008

Well, you know how they tell you to write about what you’re familiar with? Here goes.

So, a couple of days ago, matchmine shut down. All 50ish of us have been working the phones, sending emails, and talking to friends trying to land our next gigs. Here are some of the tactics I’ve been using to find my next job.

1. Ning– Once the news hit, our CEO set up a matchmine network on Ning.com. The group is by invitation only, so we have a private group allowing us to post resumes, send leads to each other, and post information on search firms, headhunters, etc. Right now, this is our main forum for interaction.

2. LinkedIn– An obvious one, but so far, the best source for finding the next job. As soon as I changed my status on LinkedIn, I started getting notifications from people with opportunities. In addition, linkedin has been great for networking. By writing recommendations for former co-workers and requesting recommendations, we’re able to give potential employers a better idea of what we’re like than we could ever do on a static resume.

3. Twitter- If you’ve got a solid network on twitter, it never hurts to notify your friends that you’re looking for a new position. I wrote a blog post on the company’s closing, and linked to that on twitter. I got some great responses, and at least one solid lead.

4. Startuply– Still want to stay in the startup game? Startuply is a new job board specifically devoted to jobs at startup companies. The Boston-area list is pretty thin and far more technical than I’m looking for, but there are some decent listings there.

5. ReadWriteWeb’s JobWire– It’s brand new, but worth checking out. ReadWriteWeb is using JobThread to run their own startup-focused job board.

6. TechCrunch’s CrunchBoard– TechCrunch uses personalforce to run their tech job board.

7. Facebook- Simply saying that I was looking for a new gig led to several facebook messages from friends and colleagues, some giving decent leads.

8. Mashable’s Job Board–  Though the listings are thin, mashable’s job list has some good filtering, allowing you to search by job type, location, etc.

9. GoBigNetwork– Lists nothing but startup jobs.

10. HotStartupJobs.com– A startup focused job aggregator.

11. StartupAgents.com– A meeting place for startups and applicants to find each other. As a job seeker, you create a profile describing your startup experience, risk level, etc., and invite “agents” to connect with you.

12. Startupers.com– A no-frills job board centered around startups.

13- Your own blog- You know, like I’m doing right now.

These are just a few of the free resources available to those looking to snag a web 2.0 or startup-based gig. Please feel free to post any others you may know of.

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Using Social Media Tools To Promote A User Acquisition Campaign

by Nathan W. Burke on October 21, 2008

All new social networks and community-focused services face the same challenge: attracting a loyal user base. Having the latest and greatest facebook+twitter+flickr+whatever is great, but worthless without an active community of users. While there are many different ways to run a user acquisition campaign, this article will focus specifically on using a contest to attract new users. We’ll look at one example of a contest created to drive user acquisition, and we’ll examine the social media tools used to promote the campaign. Though we’ll focus on a contest, the promotional methods described here can easily be used for any user acquisition campaign.

The Contest

As one of several user acquisition campaigns, my last employer, matchmine, launched a weekly sweepstakes. A little background: the company was a media discovery network, helping partners recommend better content to their users based on the users’ media preferences. The contest was created to satisfy two goals: get users to register and send traffic to partner sites.

The Prize: The winner of each week’s sweepstakes is given the choice of either

  • Two tickets to the next New England Patriots home game
  • A football signed by any New England Patriots player
  • A $100 New England Patriots Pro Shop gift certificate

Promotion

After launching the contest on patriots.com, we identified several promotional opportunities to maximize our visibility and conversion rate.

1. Video- We shot a video that summarizes the contest, including how to create accounts on our partner sites. The video not only gave us an opportunity to succinctly explain a complex contest, it was also a great off site marketing tactic. We hosted the video on blip.tv, which is both a destination site and a publishing tool. End users go to to blip.tv to watch video, and publishers get free hosting from blip. Having the video hosted at blip gave us both a free place to host the video and a new audience that would not have been able to see the video if it was hosted in-house.

In the video, the presenter mentions the URL of the contest, and it appears on screen. This way, no matter where the video is viewed, viewers know where to go to sign up for the weekly sweepstakes.

Here’s the video:

2. Refer-A-Friend– Whenever possible, it makes sense to let the community itself expand your user base. In the context of a social network or messaging system, it makes sense for users to want to invite their friends, as they get more out of the service when people they know are there. But in a contest, inviting friends seems counterproductive: why ask your friends to sign up when each friend registration reduces your chance of winning?

We solved that problem with additional entries. Let’s use an example here. We’ll say that Frank signed up for the contest. Wanting to have the best shot at winning, he decided to invite 5 of his friends to sign up. When all 5 signed up, Frank got an additional 5 more entries. By shifting the incentive to invite more people to sign up, we gave all users motivation to promote the contest.

A great example of a social service that does this well is thesixtyone.com, a music discovery site. The site gives users points for actions like listening and rating music, and also gives incentives to invite friends to join.

3. email- Ah yes, email. When a user signs up for the contest, we immediately send a confirmation email, telling them how they can earn additional entry in the contest. Each week, we also send an email announcing the winner and reminding users how to gain additional entries.

4. Friends and Family- Once the contest was launched, the first promotional activity was what we called a “friends and family” round. We encouraged all employees to send a message to their contacts to tell them about the contest. This served dual purposes: First, it gave us a chance to receive feedback from people we know personally. Second, it helped us identify any glitches before promoting to the masses.

5. Twitter– Once we felt comfortable with the way the program was working, we encouraged employees to mention it on twitter, using a shortened URL from bit.ly. Using the bit.ly url, we were able to measure clicks from twitter, along with metrics on retweets and other twitter users using the same link.

6. Facebook- Our company set up a facebook page and group specifically for this purpose. We linked to the contest on both, and encouraged friends of the company to sign up and spread the word.

7. Company Blog– As soon as the contest was launched, I posted on the company blog, giving details on how to win. I also included the embedded video.

8. Bloggers- Finally, given the fact that we’d instituted a refer-a-friend feature, we decided to extend referrals to bloggers. We compiled a list of bloggers focused on the New England Patriots, and sent them a note about the promotion. If they were interested in posting about the contest, we would create a special URL for the blogger. That way, any reader that signed up for the contest as a result of clicking the link in their blog post would give the blogger an additional entry.

All of these promotional techniques can be utilized in any user acquisition program. Whether you have great prizes to attract the masses, or simply have a great product in need of a user base, using these social media tools is a great first step in driving user signups.

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When is “free” implied?

by Nathan W. Burke on October 6, 2008

Yesterday I was in my car listening to the radio when I heard a commercial for life insurance. I’ve probably heard the same commercial 50 times before, but for some reason I actually listened to the words this time. I heard “call now for a no obligation free rate quote.”

What?

Was there ever a time when you had to pay someone to ask how much what they’re selling will cost?

Imagine walking into a store and seeing a shirt you like. There’s no price tag on it, so you bring it up to the counter. You ask the price, but instead, the cashier says “pay me $20 and I’ll tell you how much it costs.”

To me, pricing information doesn’t cost anything. It just doesn’t make any sense. Simply telling me how much you’re selling something for shouldn’t cost me a dime. In all of my experience in market transactions, this has just never happened.

So maybe the “free rate quote” line is just something of a marketing buzz phrase. Perhaps the creators of the radio ad tried two versions of the ad in front of focus groups and found that those who heard “free rate quote” called 5 times more than those that did not. Sure, it’s redundant and unnecessary, but if the line is effective, I understand what you’d add it.

To me, the question isn’t why the advertiser put “free” in an ad for something largely expected to cost nothing. The real question is: what do we expect to be free?

Free On The Web

Looking at the products and services I use on the web there are a few different pricing models:

1. Free– Twitter is the best example here for me. A service that is completely free with no ads and no premium version. It is truly a free and open service that asks nothing of its (U.S.) users.

2. Free but with ads- gmail is a good example of a free service supported by advertising. gmail gives users lots of storage and a great service, and users need only tolerate a few ads.

3. Free at first- Many of the email list management services give users a free trial. After a certain time or use limit, users are required to pay for membership.

4. Freemium- Flickr and Basecamp are my favorite examples of freemium services. Flickr gives everyone a free account, but if you need more storage space or want to add new sets of photos, you’ll need a pro account. Basecamp is a great piece of small project management SaaS, but you’ll need to pay to access premium features.

5. Always Pay- Some of the business intelligence sites are membership-only and make users pay to access their information.

So do the examples scale? If you were launching a twitter competitor tomorrow, would you be forced to offer the service for free based on perceived user expectation? Has twitter’s free service defined the business model for other microblogging platforms simply based on the fact that users associate the service with the model?

And thinking back to that commercial I heard, let me ask you this: If you were tasked with creating a commercial campaign for twitter (or any free web service) would you emphasize the fact that it is free?

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Feature As A Business (faab)

by Nathan W. Burke on August 18, 2008

You’ve heard of Saas- software as a service: things like salesforce.com where the software is hosted on the web rather than on the desktop, and users can access their account from any computer. Well, I’ve noticed a trend lately online that I’m calling Feature As A Business (faab).

Here’s the idea: some developers come up with an idea for something very small: a plugin, a search based on someone else’s API, a piggyback service based on another company’s data. They then launch the product as a company. Rather than actually being a company that releases a line of products/services, they’re now a product releasing a company.

And to me, that’s not a problem.

Developers like the people that put summize together got it exactly right. They built a better way to search twitter. Using twitter’s public API, summize created a nice way to search for keywords and trends in twitter as well as a slick UI. Then twitter bought them.

Summize, to me, is the example of a feature as a business that worked. And it worked mainly because the folks behind summize didn’t suffer from the “we can build an entire business around this” syndrome. Instead, they improved on an existing product and sold their improvements to twitter.

But many developers out there take the other path. They enter a crowded market, create a clone of  an existing product, and then pitch themselves as “we’re ______ plus groups.” Or “think of us as twitter + ebay + blogger but with RSS and an iPhone app.”

The example I see most is in the travel sites popping up. It seems like there’s a new Trip_______ weekly, each saying “we’re just like the other guys but we have _____ too.

Sure, the ________ is a point of differentiation, but is it enough to create an entire business around? Conversely, when there are many competitors in a given market, is one feature enough to get users to belong to your site instead of another?

Now is the part of the post where I contradict myself.

Rereading the preceding paragraphs, it sounds like I’m knocking companies trying to turn a feature into a company. Well, that’s not what I’m shooting for at all, and let me tell you why.

I think the feature as a business model is absolutely necessary right now because of one thing…….data portability. If projects like the DataPortability Workgroup actually take off, it will completely change the way we interact with our own data. Instead of letting social networks store and control our own content, users will have control of their data, and will choose which services can access their data.

Think of it like this: rather than buying an entire meal, you can get each item a la carte. And that’s how we’ll choose our online services. Maybe I like twitter as my microblogging service and you prefer identica. That’s fine, and we can still talk to each other despite using different providers.

Though it still may be far off, interoperable, distributed services are coming. And when they do, we’ll be comparing and evaluating products and services based on their features. Might as well get a head start.

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There is no such thing as social media. There are no assertive hammers. There are no malicious popsicles.

by Nathan W. Burke on August 8, 2008

Today I hit a breaking point. One of those rare moments in life when you break out of the autopilot that is every day human experience and stop. Something that you’ve taken for granted suddenly changes in your mind. Your entire construction of reality up to that point is called into question, and you are forced to redefine normality.

What was it? And what did it have to do with “social media”? Well, I’ll tell you.

I watched a cartoonist argue about social media with a fictional character on twitter.

Once I realized the absurd and surreal nature of what I was witnessing, the term “social media” popped into my head, and I started to think about what it actually means. It certainly has all the feel of a buzzword without meaning, but who am I to judge? So, I did what anyone would do: I asked the googles.

After a barrage of ads from “accredited social media experts”, “social media success coaches” and companies wanting to perform a social media audit, I still had no answer. People wanted to charge me money for their expertise in something I have yet to get a definition for. My head spins.

So I turn to wikipedia. You know what they say: if it’s on the internet, it has to be true.

Social media is an umbrella term that defines the various activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories, and understandings.

Right…..I am now less intelligent for reading that. So basically “social media” is any activity that results in anything, anywhere, as long as people are around and technology is involved somewhere. If that’s the case:

  • If I’m riding on a subway with an ’80s style boombox blaring, and people are around, that’s social media.
  • If I bring a fishing pole into Petco and have a friend record the reactions of people who think I’m a lunatic while I try to catch a beta fish, well, that’s social media.

Well, if that’s true, being a social media expert sounds like a pretty sweet gig. How’s that for a segue…..?

This morning I saw an article on mashable entitled “Are Social Media Jobs Here to Stay?” by Ben Parr. In it, Mr. Parr says:

Let’s face it: Social media has become one of the hot buzzwords in tech circles. It used to be Web 2.0 and social networking, but now we have moved on to a broader term that encompasses not only social networking, but blogs, podcasts, user-generated content, social bookmarking, microblogging, and lifestreams. The rise of all these forms of new media has also created demand for people who can help companies position and market themselves within this new realm.

So, why do we talk about “social media” as an area of expertise? Aren’t we really talking about promotion? We’re now defining a role based on the tools used to achieve goals. We’re not interested in hiring a painter, instead we’re looking for a paint roller guru. Who wants a lion tamer when you can get a whip expert?

Am I just worrying about semantics? Maybe. But maybe not. Here’s my theory:

When you use a vague term like “social media”, you sound mysterious. Saying “I’m a social media expert” is a lot like saying “I am an alchemist. You wouldn’t understand.” The mention of the term suggests a closely guarded set of skills used to achieve an unmeasurable goal resulting in instant riches. And there’s always someone that will say “here’s my money. Do your thing” rather than “I don’t understand what you’re selling. Please explain it to me.”

Am I bashing the slick tools that comprise “social media?” Not at all. I love things like twitter, blogs, video, podcasts, the whole thing. If it’s shiny and has a beta invite available, I’m all over it. But in the end, they’re just tools. Means to an end.

A ladder isn’t very useful when you’re not trying to get to an elevated position. But if you need to clear the roof, it’s the best.

Have a great weekend. This is Nathan Burke, keyboard pressing expert, and mouse click guru.

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