My 2011 Social Media Wish List

By Mark Evans in Social Media 5 Comments Tags: , , , ,

As we turn the page on 2010, it looks like 2011 will be another exciting year for social media given the flurry of new services hitting the market and the growing number of people climbing on the bandwagon.

Here’s my wish list of things I’d like to see happen:

1. Twitter stumbles upon or discovers a business model so we can finally stop talking about Twitter not having a way to make money. Maybe it will be advertising based on the $200-million of venture capital the company now has to hire an army of salespeople.

2. Twitter is acquired by Yahoo. No, that would be a nightmare that I wouldn’t want to wish on my biggest enemy. Twitter is acquired by someone other than Yahoo for several billion dollars so we don’t have to talk about Twitter being acquired by someone again. The new owner immediately rolls out a business model and a menu of premium services to an enthusiastic reaction, and also buys HootSuite, TwitPic, TweetDeck and TwitterCounter.

3. Privacy thrusts itself into the spotlight after being pretty much ignored by millions of people happily talking about the details of their personal and professional lives. It suddenly dawns on many of them that what happens on the Web, stays on the Web forever, and there’s no “delete” button for anything. This causes Facebook to finally get serious about privacy by launching new and user-friendly privacy options that feature a default of “private”.

4. Another social media network emerges to take on Facebook, whose amazing growth has much to do with the fact there’s little competition. Maybe it’s the new and improved MySpace, which is purchased and then overhauled by Google. Maybe Diaspora goes from novelty to tour de force, or perhaps it’s a completely new social network that offers the utility of Facebook and the privacy that consumers increasingly realize they need.

5. Quality starts to become more important than quality as individuals and companies realize it’s not the number of tweets, Likes, followers, friends, RSS subscribers or Diggs that really matter. Instead, it’s about effectively leveraging social media in a smart, efficient and focused way. This eliminates a lot of social noise now polluting the landscape, including all tweets about visits to Starbucks, sick pets or cute children.

6. Google mashes together Blogger, Picasa, Google Images, YouTube, FeedBurner, Google Maps and Google News to create a kick-ass, super-duper blogging platform that becomes a strong rival to WordPress. In response, WordPress’ Matt Mullenweg rolls out an aggressive anti-Google strategy in which WordPress makes a series of acquisitions, including Tumblr and Squarespace.

Now, that’s what I call a wish list! What’s on your wish list?

More: Here’s a list of social media predications from Mashable.

What I Learned about Business in 2010

By Mark Evans in Main Page No Comments Tags: , , ,

It is sometimes difficult to believe that it’s been two years since I started ME Consulting – a move that came more out of necessity after parting ways to PlanetEye, an online travel startup.

In many respects, it has been a huge education, as well as a tremendously exciting and satisfying personal and professional adventure. Althought I had worked for three start-ups (Blanketware, b5Media and PlanetEye), there is really nothing like starting and running your own company. When there is no one else to support the business, you can either sink or swim.

In 2009, ME Consulting was all about survival and experimentation. You have to remember the economic downturn was alive and well. so it probably wasn’t the best time to go into business for yourself. My biggest focus was getting enough business to operate for another month. Every new client meant another brick within the foundation, which meant there was no lack of motivation.

As 2010 rolled around, ME Consulting was a going concern. Rather than thinking about surviving, I started to focus on growing the business and doing a better job of telling the world what I do and why they should care. At the same time, the learning curve stayed front and centre. Here are the biggest things I learned in 2010.

1. Life gets a lot easier and more fun with the right partners and people. My partnership with Seth Singer (aka Think 33) has been a win-win professionally and personally. By having Seth as a partner, we’ve been able to expand into a digital agency that offers social media strategy and tactics, Web site development and design, content creation and video production. Basically, we’ve become a one-stop shop – something that wasn’t possible without our partnership.

2. Sell, sell and then sell some more. As much as it’s great having clients, the reality is you can never rest on your laurels, and stop selling. Clients come and clients go, which means the hunt for new business never ceases. It can take a lot of energy and time to be prospecting but it’s a necessary evil to keep a business thriving.

3. Don’t take on business you can’t do. It seems like a simple proposition but it can be difficult to turn down business, particularly if your company isn’t running at full capacity. It is a lesson I learned the hard way after accepting a marketing gig that didn’t seem like a natural fit but the dollars were difficult to turn down. After spending a month scrambling to do the work, I had to concede it wasn’t in my wheelhouse – a decision that frustrated the client, who had entered into the project in good faith.

4. Referrals are good (and the right thing to do). In some ways, this lesson is closely linked to #3. If there is a situation that’s not a good fit, the best move is referring someone to another person or company who can meet their needs. This has three benefits: it avoids you taking on work you can’t do, it helps the other party, and it scores point with the company getting the referral. One of my biggest and most interesting clients happened because I made a referral with no expectations other than doing the right thing.

5. It’s smart to invest in your business. As much as we’re living in a lean and mean environment, there are many benefits to investments that make your business operate more efficiently and effectively. It could be buying office equipment, computer hardware or online services. It could be hiring people to do work that would consume too much of your time. The key is spending where it makes the more sense and you get the biggest return.

6. Make sure your books and finances are well organized. The biggest mistake I made in 2009 was not spending enough time on my finances. It meant having to spend several weeks reviewing receipts, back-dating transactions and categorizing spending to get my books properly organized. While I didn’t perfect my finances in 2010, I was a lot better organized. Next year, maybe the shoebox full of receipts will disappear!

What were the biggest lessons you learned in 2010?

The Key to Outstanding Blog Posts: Quality

By Mark Evans in Blogs No Comments Tags: , , ,

Having shifted my blogging approach this year to offer more perspective than news reporting, a post on Social Media Today entitled “5 Ways to Make Your Blog Posts Outstanding” caught my attention.

The suggestions are fine but there is one crucial element missing: high-quality content that enlightens, engages, entertains or educates. Far too often, blog posts are whipped off for the sake of having a blog post each and every day. As a result, there’s little of substance being offered other than perhaps a tidbit of information. The post fills a void but it is not adding much to the conversation.

In many respects, this is just the way the blog game is played given volume (aka most posts) is as important as quality. It can be one of the most frustrating parts of blogging to see something offering different perspective or insight be ignored while a post on a service going off-line for a short period of captures enraptures everyone.

At the end of the day, most bloggers should focus on quality because there is no way they can compete for attention on volume. When blogging is not your job and it doesn’t generate enough ad revenue to buy more than a cup of coffee each day, why would you focus on not writing posts that display your insight and perspective? When someone reads your blog – even if doesn’t get a lot of traffic – there is an opportunity to make an impression.

If I’m riding a theme in 2011, it’s going to be quality versus quantity. One of the pitfalls of the social media toolkit now available to everyone is the barriers to entry are minimal. Creating content is easier than ever but just because you can create content doesn’t mean it has to happen, including blog posts.

The Power of Paper in a Digital World

By Mark Evans in Social Media 5 Comments Tags: , , ,

A funny thing happened to me in 2010 amid the flurry of social media, tablets, smartphones and online services: I fell in love with paper all over again.

While I’m probably as enamoured with the Web, gadgets and hardware as the next guy or girl, paper has started to play a key role in my personal and professional world. It wasn’t by design but simply that paper made more sense.

For example, my consulting business has become really busy, and one of the ways I managed to get a handle on projects is using large sheets of paper to do mind-minding. In my office, there’s a growing pile of paper that features a variety of colours – paper that contains the plans and directions for the work done for many clients. I have tried online mind-minding services but find the tangibility of paper to be more effective and valuable.

I have also become a big fan of Moleskin notebooks. I always carry a small Moleskin in my jacket pocket to write down ideas for blog posts, presentations, and interesting people, books or people. The notebook isn’t particularly organized but the act of writing things down somehow makes them resonate or stick in my brain. Moleskins aren’t particularly sexy but from what I can they still have staying power.

In the past months, I have also embraced paper to create daily to-do lists – in addition to information that exists in iCal and DayLite. It was something that happened because I started to forget phone calls that I had to make, which is not a good thing when your business is all about customer service. Creating a paper-based to-do list somehow makes it easy to remember everything.

And I’m still reading newspapers in the morning at a time when my Google Reader account is collecting dust. Maybe it has to do with my roots as a newspaper reporter but, to me, newspapers are still an elegant and effective way to consume a lot of information, which can then be shared digitally via Facebook or Twitter. For all the talk about the iPad and how it could save the newspaper and magazine worlds, “real” newspapers are a very functional vehicle even if the financial model isn’t as lucrative.

And if you wanted to stretch the paper argument, maybe we could bring whiteboards into the mix. I have several whiteboards in my office, and plan to install IdeaPaint on a wall in the next couple of weeks. If I had the money, I would probably buy a Smart Board to marry the digital and whiteboard worlds.

Maybe paper continues to be part of my world because part of me is still analog in a digital world. At the end of the day, paper still works for me so there’s reason to jump off the bandwagon. How about you?

A New and Different Approach to Blogging

By Mark Evans in Blogs, Social Media 7 Comments Tags: , , ,

As we look back at 2010, perhaps the biggest change as far as my use of social media has been a different approach to blogging. Rather than focusing on quantity or, at least feeling the the need to blog every day, I decided to embrace quality.

Part of it had to do with the realization that trying to compete on reporting on the news is a fool’s game given the blogging powerhouses such as GigaOm, TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, Mashable, etc. Any attempt to report on what’s happening feels like joining a party that’s already in full swing.

At the same time, my digital marketing and social media consulting business became very busy and there just aren’t enough hours in the day to blog and do work for clients, who are paying for my time, energy and services. These clients include Sysomos, for whom I write their blog. I could be bold in saying my posts on social media have been high quality and well received, including a ranking within the AdAge Power 150.

It meant having to take a different approach that featured perspective and context. Rather than jumping into the fray, I’ll wait a day or so to think about what things mean. Then, I will write a blog post that may not be timely but, hopefully, offers something of value.

Another theme has been writing away from the news, which has meant exploring different ideas and topics that may not be particularly newsworthy. It has been posts such as suggesting that Facebook make all data public that have been interesting to do even though the thinking may go against the grain.

While this new approach may mean writing three or even two posts a week, it feels like the right approach to balance work, life and blogging. When business is less busy, there’s more time to think and more time to blog. When business is crazy, work usually rules the day. Sometimes, it has meant not blogging but, instead, using Twitter to put the spotlight on idea that capture my attention.

The alternative – and something that many bloggers struggle with – is giving up blogging completely because there just doesn’t seem to be enough time to make it happen. The problem with giving up is it can be very difficult to get back in the game. Once you step away from blogging, your audience can quickly disappear. On the other hand, if you continue to blog at a slower pace, you are still playing and, as important, have the option of gearing up again.

So, for now, blogging takes up less of my digital pie but that’s okay.

The BlackBerry: It’s the Keyboard, Stupid

By Mark Evans in Apple/iPod, Wireless 10 Comments Tags: , , ,

It wasn’t that long ago that Steve Jobs basically declared the BlackBerry to be dead in the water. As far as Jobs was concerned, the BlackBerry’s days as a relevant and tier-one smartphone were over.

You know what? Jobs may actually be wrong for the first time in a long time. Last week, Research in Motion posted better-than-expected third-quarter results in which it shipped 14 million BlackBerrys. And despite the fact the iPad is the cat’s meow of the tablet market, there appears to be strong interest in RIM’s PlayBook, which will appear early next year.

For anyone trying to figure out how the BlackBerry is keeping its head above water amid the iPhone, Samsung Galaxy and the growing number of smartphone options, here’ the answer: the keyboard.

The keyboard is the BlackBerry’s “killer app”. Forget about apps or a touch screen, it’s the keyboard that rules the BlackBerry roost, and drives sales. If you look around, it’s not just businesspeople using the BlackBerry. There are lots of young people with BlackBerrys, many of them furiously tapping away on the keyboard.

These younger consumers are text-messaging (including the wildly popular and free BBM), doing e-mail and, of course, using social media (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.). For them, the keyboard is essential because it is a superior experience to a touch-screen. Sure, touchscreen technology is improving but the tactile feel of a keyboard is what counts right now – something the BlackBerry has down even though it has also embraced touchscreen technology with the Torch.

As long as consumers find a keyboard to be a better experience, and as long as smartphone makers focus more on touchscreens, the Blackberry will continue to thrive because the keyboard does the job. It may not be sexy or leading edge but the keyboard works.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
1 2 3