What We Have Houston is a Focus Crisis

By Mark Evans in Media, Social Media 2 Comments Tags: , , ,

The ability to multi-task is an urban myth.

You may try to do multiple things at the same time but it is difficult, if not impossible, to focus on the task at hand if there several tasks battling for attention.

Nevertheless, there’s a widely-accepted belief that talking on the phone, writing an e-mail, and checking your Twitter status at the same time is an efficient way to operate.

Frankly, we’re kidding ourselves. It may be physically possible to multi-task but it’s totally inefficient to be bouncing around from task to task like a Mexican jumping bean, rather than focusing on one thing at a time, before moving on to the next task. (aka single-tasking).

Focus is a subject I have battled to embrace over the past couple of years as the demands of handling multiple consulting clients makes it more important to manage my time and focus my efforts. In our multi-tasking world, it takes tremendous discipline to bear down on what needs to be done when there are a variety of tempting distractions.

Among my peers, it seemed like I was the only one struggling to figure out if there was a different way to operate – a way that let us focus in a multi-tasking world.

It is encouraging to see other people start to address what I see as the “Focus Crisis”.

In a blog post recently, Jason Falls asked “What would happened if you took a break from social media? Falls, a social media consultant, addressed the issue of being engaged professionally and personally when social media can be seductive mistress demanding your attention 24/7.

Mark MacLeod (aka StartupCFO) had a post about turning off his wireless device so he could focus on talking to new companies about a possible investment, or watching his son swim. Again, we’re talking about someone struggling to focus. To an effort to get back on the right track, MacLeod made this commitment:

“So, I am vowing now to my family, my partners and the entrepreneurs we meet that I will be present. Work will continue to come in probably faster and faster as our portfolio grows over time. So, I will need to be very good at carving out blocks for work and blocks for meetings. And at home, I will need to create distinct times for work vs. continually floating in and out of work and family stuff.”

Finally, the New York Times has a front-page story today about the struggles teachers are having getting students to focus. In class, students are sending dozens of text messages using wireless devices rather than focusing on the teacher.

Maybe I’m taking 1 + 1 + 1 to equal four but what we’re increasingly having is a failure to focus on anything. We’re multi-tasking, distracted and inefficient. Our personal lives are less rich and engaged because we need to check our wireless devices for e-mail or update our Twitter status. Our professional lives are becoming less productive even at a time when it’s more important to focus because many companies continue to operate lean and mean.

As the ability to focus becomes more difficult, we’re losing something along the way. In our personal lives, it’s respect and true engagement – something that can not be achieved when a conversation with someone could be abandoned at any time to take a phone call. In our professional lives, we’re less efficient, which means more stress because the work isn’t getting done. As a result, work is spilling into our personal lives so we can catch up.

Not a lot of people may be talking about it but we’re in the midst of a focus crisis. And it’s not going to any easier as more devices, technologies and online services battle for attention. But if we don’t get a handle on being focused soon, we’re in trouble.

Ramon De Leon Rocks meshmarketing

By Mark Evans in Social Media No Comments Tags: , , ,

When we decided to see if Ramon De Leon would come to meshmarketing, it was seen as a bit of long shot. After all, De Leon is social media star who’s in demand to speak around the world.

For those of you not familiar with De Leon, he owns six Domino’s Pizza franchises in downtown Chicago, and has leveraged social media, particularly videos, to build a huge personal brand, as well as transform his business into something more than stores selling pizza.

Nevertheless, we thought he would be perfect for a panel looking at how companies have built brands using social media. To our surprise, De Leon accepted our invitation, and it would be fair to say he rocked the meshmarketing house, not only during his panel but throughout the day as he talked with pretty much anyone who wanted to talk to him.

The biggest reason why De Leon is so good is he’s genuine: a real person with real passion and enthusiasm for his business and using social business to connect with customers, potential customers and non-customers. He brings real-world perspective to social media that many people and companies now need.

We’ve gone through the “hey, social media is really cool and look at all these shiny toys” stage. Now, the focus is on providing real-world examples and case studies of how companies are using social media and what they are getting from their investments. In De Leon, you have a living, breathing social media machine that doesn’t stop.

During his panel, De Leon was checking his Twitter stream, while entertaining and engaging the audience with stories of how social media has impacted his business. During the conference, he was shooting videos and being videoed by a steady stream of people. Given where we are at with social media, De Leon is talking the talk and walking the walk.

His stature within the social media landscape is impressive given De Leon is a small business owner running six pizza stores. But the reason De Leon connects with so many people and his stories resonate so well is how he demonstrates that social media can be an effective vehicle for any business if it’s done with passion, energy and creativity.

Social media doesn’t have to involved expensive campaigns, bells and whistles and high-cost social media consultants. All you need is a plan, a goal and a commitment to learn and make it happen.

Ramon De Leon at meshmarketing from Mark Evans on Vimeo.

meshmarketing #2 – Bring it On!

By Mark Evans in Advertising/Marketing No Comments Tags: , , ,

After months of planning, the second edition of meshmarketing happens tomorrow. While I was excited about the initial meshmarketing last year, I’m particularly stoked about this year’s conference.

First and foremost, I think the content is top-notch. We’ve got excellent speakers, great keynotes (Michael Slaby and Marian Salzman) and workshops and a new venue, the Allstream Centre.

Getting back to the content, which has been a pillar of mesh and meshmarketing, we have been fortunate to have reaped the benefits of a beautiful partnership with Trina Boos, who runs the successful AdLounge events. Trina has quarterbacked the programming for meshmarketing with enthusiasm, energy and determination. While last year’s programming was pretty good, Trina has raised the bar in a major way.

So why it meshmarketing different from other digital marketing conferences?

First, we’ve brought in speakers – many of whom have never been to Toronto – to offer real-world insight into creating and running digital marketing campaigns. And while we have two terrific keynotes that will get meshmarketing off to an inspiring and thought-provoking start, the “meat” of meshmarketing is the afternoon of interactive workshops that will provide people not only food for thought but lots of ideas to make things happen.

Personally, I’m really looking forward to a fireside chat with Lee LeFever, who, along with his wife, Sachi, creates the popular CommonCraft videos. Lee and Sachi have made the many of the Web’s new and cool technologies such as social media, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook easily understandable.

As someone who spends a lot of time creating stories and helping companies clearly articulate what they do and why people should care, I have a huge amount of respect for people such as Lee, who can cut to the chase in a user-friendly way.

My thanks to everyone who has purchased tickets at a time when there are lots of different marketing conferences to attend. We hope you enjoy the programming, speakers and, of course, the networking opportunities – something that makes mesh and meshmarketing that much more interesting and valuable.

If you’d like to buy tickets, you can do so here.

One last thing: A big thank you as well to our event planner, Sheri Moore, and her MCC Planners team. mesh and meshmarketing wouldn’t be able to happen without them.

The Party is Over; the Digital Pendulum is Swinging Back

By Mark Evans in Web 2.0 No Comments Tags: , , , ,

The New York Times has an interesting article today looking at the launch of Path, a new social network founded by ex-Facebook employee Dave Morin, who describes it as a “personal network”.

The twist is Path lets you have a maximum of 50 friends, which means, theoretically, you are limited to having real friends within your network as opposed to friends of friends of friends, acquaintances and people you don’t know. At first blush, Path is definitely different. The question is whether 50 or fewer friends will have any kind of appeal in a world in which collecting friends seems paramount. As well, can Path establish a foothold in an already crowded market. (See my recent “New Kid on the Block” post about the challenges facing newcomers taking on giants.)

Another important question is whether Path is a novelty or whether the social network pendulum is starting to swing back after an enthusiastic couple of years that has seen Facebook explode. With Path and other social networks such as Diaspora, there appears to be a move towards smaller, more private networks that, frankly, operate more like real-world networks.

While Path is focused on small, Diaspora is focused on privacy. Both seem to be a direct backlash to Facebook, which is focused on large social graphs and making as much of your information public despite its ever-changing privacy control adjustments.

Personally, I have been waiting for the social pendulum to start swinging back, although to what extent is unclear.

Right now, it feels like a wild party in which anything goes. Everyone is building large social networks based more on numbers than people we know or value. We’re sharing astounding and alarming amounts of information about our personal and professional lives with little sense of the potential consequences, including the fact many people are surrendering any kind of privacy. And we’re engrossed within our digital worlds while other parts of our lives such as fitness and friends get less time and attention.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m as much a digital animal as the next guy or girl. But there doesn’t seem to be a healthy balance between digital and non-digital. The Internet has come so far, so fast in the past decade, we have hardly had time to breath. At some point, I think people are going to run out of breath, look around, and wonder “How the hell did I get here?”

One way to look at start-ups such as Path is to consider them telltale signs or clues of what may be over the horizon for people looking for a new and different experience with the Web. For that matter, you could throw in the growing number of start-ups looking to wrestle e-mail to the ground given the amount of time we spend in our inboxes. And then there is the whole content curation movement.

All of these developments point to the fact people are starting to think the Web is out of control, and controlling too much of our lives and time.

The Challenges of Being the New Kid on the Block

By Mark Evans in Social Media, Web 2.0 No Comments Tags: , ,

I have a confession to make. Despite all the fuss about RockMelt and Blekko recently, I haven’t spent much time on either service. Both seem interesting: RockMelt is a “social browser” that integrates your social media activity, while Blekko is a new search engine that takes a different approach than Google, including the ability to “tag” results.

The problem is a combination of not having enough time to check out RockMelt and Blekko and, as important, the challenge in changing hard-coded behaviour. When doing a search, the default is Google; when using a Web browser, it’s Chrome or Firefox. These are tools that are an engrained part of my Web toolbox, which makes it difficult to add new or different tools – even tools that could be more interesting or different.

This is likely something most Web users face. Once you start using particular services or software, it can be difficult to switch to something new. We are creatures of habit, and that extends to our use of the Web.

This makes it an significant challenge for new players to establish a foothold, even a modest one. Not only does a new service have to be significantly better and/or different, its benefits and features need to be clearly articulated, and it has to get the story distributed and told to as many people as possible to gain any kind of traction. Even then, people who learn about a new service may decide to ignore it or check it out later.

The question is what can a new service do to break into a market with a dominant player? Here are some thoughts:

1. It needs to be superior, different or provide a better user experience. I would argue a service that is easier and more intuitive to use has more of a chance to succeed than a new service that tries to compete by having more bells and whistles.

2. It needs to fill a need that has been solved properly or in an elegant way. Perhaps the best example is DropBox. While there have been lots of online storage options, DropBox has captured many users by offering a service that provides needed the functionality in a user-friendly way. The free offer of 2GB of storage provides an attractive option for many people, along with DropBox’s innovative and easy-to-use file-sharing technology.

3. The messaging has to be crystal clear. A new service must quickly articulate what it does and the benefits it offers, otherwise time-strapped consumers will move on. The message needs to be dead simple so people immediately say “Yes, I get it”. A good example is Freshbooks, whose Web site proclaims it is “The painless way to track time and invoice clients”. I’m also a big fan of a well-produced 60-to-90-second corporate video that tell people what a service does and why someone should care. These videos can be expensive to make but they are well worth the investment because they can be used for a variety of purposes.

4. The service needs to reach a wide audience based on the idea only a small percentage will pick up on it. This means a company has to craft stories that will resonate with the needs of particular target audiences. As well, opinion leaders have to be brought into the mix to take advantage of their influence and large audiences.

5. There has to be as little “grit” as possible. If the home page makes it difficult to understand what a company does, it will turn off a potential user. The same goes for a registration process that is too complex or time-consuming, an “About Us” page that isn’t short, sweet and clear about the benefits for the user, or a bad FAQ. Anything that could cause a potential user to walk away has to be eliminated.

The bottom line is it can be an enormous challenge being the new kid on the block. It’s not enough to be better or different. That said, it is not an impossible task to establish a foothold by taking the right approach. With some luck and enough people spreading the word, new services have a shot of making it even in the shadow of a large and dominant player.

Do Consumers Want Canada’s New Wireless Players?

By Mark Evans in Wireless 4 Comments Tags: , , ,

In theory, more competition in Canada’s wireless market is a good thing because it will encourage the industry to become more innovative and, hopefully, it will drive down prices, which rank as the highest in the world.

The question, however, is whether consumers are interested in Canada’s new wireless players, which have emerged to compete against the three large incumbents – Rogers, Telus and Bell. So far, it doesn’t look like consumers really care much about the new competitors, which includes Wind, Public Mobile and Videotron.

Earlier this week, Wind CEO Tony Lacavera said the company has attracted about 140,000 customers. On the surface, it looks pretty good but it does appear the company has enough traction to reach its goal of 1.5 million customers by the end of its third year of business. In Quebec, Videoton only attracted 8,400 wireless customers in the third-quarter, failing to meet the 25,000 to 30,000 expected by analysts.

While the new wireless players will talk about the progress they are making, the harsh reality is Canada’s wireless landscape is a challenging place to establish a foothold when you consider how long the incumbents have been able to establish themselves. While the new players are valiantly trying to capture the attention of consumers, the incumbents are aggressively counter-attacking every move the new players make. A blatant example is Rogers’ launch of the low-cost Chattr brand earlier this year.

Maybe the the new wireless competitors need more time to win over consumers and position themselves as alternatives. Perhaps it is a matter of consumers being able to free themselves of long-term contracts before being able to consider alternatives. It could be that the new players need to offer cool smartphones given this is where the market is rapidly heading.

But any you want to cut it, Canada’s wireless market is, on the surface, more competitive but the bigger question is whether Canadian consumers are willing to enthusiastically embrace the new competitors.

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