Interestingly enough, the more I use the networks as a way to share what’s of most interest to me, and engage with friends and colleagues without any concern for their rank or alleged influence, the more satisfied I am with my engagement with social media.  And as it turns out, this less prolific method of using social media has had beneficial effects.

At one point, it looked like many of the influence measures were taking volume into consideration more than any other factor in rating your ‘importance” online.  But now that I am overall, less prolific through channels, picking which channels to share things out on, and varying the channels, the greater the increase in my measures.  My first thought seeing this, was “weird.”

Now, I’m thinking that the measures may actually be starting to look more at quality over quantity, spread of the information, but also cross-channel participation.  Measuring influence is a tricky business at any level, and even harder when the data points you look at are your own and subject to internal bias.  The message I feel comfortable in sharing at this point is that authentic engagement seems to carry more value than volume.  I think all of us with a lot of experience on digital channels have known this at our core for a long time, but it seems as if the “rating agencies” are starting to pick this up as well, and that may be a good thing for the space as a whole.

What do you think?  Do you see any value in these “rating agencies”?  Why?  What do you get out of it?  Do you care what your klout or peer index are?  Or is it truly just a side benefit of what you do already?

From the Econ and Statistics Administration of the US Dept. of Commerce

I was with my trainer this morning, and we were discussing post-holiday things, as is typical the first week in January.  And I was struck by the following thought:

We got ourselves out of the Great Depression by an expansion of productivity, consumer spending, and eventually World War II.  (I will grant you up front this is probably largely simplified.) I don’t think we can do this again, and looking for consumers to haul us out of the economic doldrums alone without something else, is a mistake.

In this great recession, we’ve initially looked for consumers spending again at previously high levels.  But a series of articles over the past few weeks, have led to me to doubt that that will happen, in part, because we don’t “need” as much as we have in the past.

Look at the Chart above from the US. Department of Commerce.  Despite an increase in net worth, consumer spending is flat-lining at a decent, but not overwhelming rate.  Is it possible that we simply no longer need any more stuff?

Hear me out for a minute.  After the Great Depression, there was a vast input of new consumer devices that helped make the average person’s life more productive.  Think of everything from telephones to dishwashers to washers and dryers.  Think Refrigerators, TV’s, VCR’s and more.  Even computers, cell phones and the like have helped drive consumer spending.  But this year, as I did my holiday shopping, my family had much less on their want and need list than ever before.  We’re pretty much saturated with stuff, and we’re starting to move into the “let’s spend money on experiences” – ie. go someplace or do something together, rather than add to our inventory.

Sure, there’s replacement of old stuff.  There’s some upgrades to our older stuff as well.  But there’s not a lot of earth shattering upgrades that fundamentally alter functionality or time or anything else that we really need.  I may not be typical, I grant you.  We also tend to be a geeky household with more technology than is perhaps decent and seemly. But even as a self-proclaimed member of the technorati, I haven’t bothered to upgrade to 3D TV or Blu-ray because I don’t see the point, really.

Even the nifty stuff we did buy this year are niche products like coffee joulies, and we’re waiting for our Touchfire keyboard.  My husband thinks the Nest thermostat is something he wants.  But these products are what I certainly would call niche and weird.  Seth Godin has about a jillion blog posts that hit this subject matter, including his great book, We Are All Weird.  It comes down to innovations and opportunities being smaller and at the margins, but doable, and profitable for those willing to take the risk.  It’s not about the mass, vanilla middle anymore, and it may not be about making mass companies to produce mass products either.

I grew up in Rochester New York, which incubated some pretty awesome companies over time.  Kodak.  Xerox.  Bausch and Lomb. Stromberg- Carlson. (makers of Telephones and PBX systems).  It was a town where folks would grow up, get a job at one of the big businesses in town and be set for life.  A manufacturing town, and middle America in many ways.  Many of these companies have moved out of town, or in he process of the big wind-down, as Kodak is dismantling many of their plants because it’s cheaper than selling them off.  And the word on the street is that Kodak let many great ideas sit on the shelf, like Xerox did with its PARC lab, letting other companies with a greater appetite for risk take these great ideas and develop them into whole industries.  (You could argue that Apple alone helped usher in the decline in local print shops with development of fonts, and accompanying laser printers, making desktop publishing a reality, and programs like iPhoto along with digital cameras make printing photos less relevant than ever before, issuing an end to Kodachrome…but I digress.)

The point here is that we have plenty of ideas and even plenty of nifty products, but the end of the mass and the production for the mass market is coming to a plateau.  And as such, I’m not sure we’re going to be able to rely on consumer spending to drag us out of the recession.  It’s going to be small businesses, entrepreneurs, and the like, who now have as much access to consumers all over the world as never before, that will be our new engine of productivity.

I could be wrong of course, but I know I don’t have an un-ending need for new washers, dryers, or other large consumer products, because my current ones work just fine, and the upgrades are not enough to convince me to replace early.    As a result, I’m just not sure where the big consumer demand is going to be to drive our economy forward.  I think the new normal will be relatively flat spending and slow growth, and we should prepare for that reality.

What do you think?  Have I got it wrong?  Why?

Articles and Resources:

Why Best Buy is Going Out of Business…Gradually Forbes.com

Americans Plan to Spend the Same on Christmas (look at the trend lines…) Gallup.com

Lack of Hot Toy challenges retailers ABC.com

12 Crucial Consumer Trends for 2012 (many include “recycling”) Trendwatching.com

Online Shopping Statistics Visual.ly.com

What Drives Consumer Spending, Department of Commerce

I’ve combined the handouts for weeks Two and Three into one PDF, you can download by clicking here: Branding Your Business Week Two and Three.

I combined the handouts because much of the material concentrates on making sure your website is working for you. Your online presence is a “threshold experience” like walking into a store for the first time. The design, navigation, information and calls to action are all extremely important when it comes to taking people directed there by any social media site or offline interaction and converting them into customers.

So long before we add “social media sauce” to your marketing mix to help increase traffic to your business and website, we really need to make sure that website allows people to do business with you as simply as possible. We suggest a couple of simple tests to look at your website with a new eye, and check for things that might cause problems for your customers, and we have a few tasks to make sure your business is easier to find through search.

We then suggest you make sure you have a good analytics package on your site, so you can begin to look at what affect your social media efforts may have in increasing your business traffic, and let you know what you may want to adjust over time, if things aren’t getting the attention you want them to have.

We’ll then talk a little bit about Google’s Zero Moment of Truth, (you can download their great e-book on their website, or by clicking this link) and how you need to start thinking about how to reach your customers during their research process, and help make sure you are one of the options they consider when looking for a product of service in your industry.

I’ve also included a few great blog posts covering topics ranging from “Link Bait” to The Best Small and Medium Business Metrics to “How Much Time Should I Spend on Social media?” from a variety of great websites around the web (all credited and linked to the source).

Please let us know if these handouts are helpful, and I look forward to seeing you in class!

Business Feedback Loops

Before the internet, we had to wait a lot longer between taking an action and seeing a result.  You launch a product, and in the next quarter, half year, or longer, you might finally have enough data to begin to see whether the product was a success or not.  If you get mediocre results,  you might start to consider tweeking the product, but the time between “trial”and “error” or getting an improvement out to the existing customers has been so long, it hardly seemed to matter much.

Now with the internet, you can begin to get almost instantaneous feedback from customers, and go to work almost immediately on your next iteration, if needed.  This can be a blessing and a curse, of course.  You may save money by not having to commit to thousands of units if your item has problems and you find out early, but the pros and cons of your 1st bite at the apple will also haunt you by the spread of reviews, comments, blogs and the rest around the internet.  This would be why limited beta testing and early focus groups are even more valuable to help you sort out details long before official launch.

Keep in mind, early reaction can be misleading.  Think about all those tech folks who said “Who cares about the iPad?  It’s just a big iPod touch- who needs one of those?” Those tech insiders and geeks had to eat their words when they figured out they weren’t the only audience for the thing.  Making choices and reacting too early to the early adopter crowd might lead you to making a big mistake- so it’s important to know which audiences you are speaking to and how important and relevant their feedback is to your overall vision and business.

Implementing Helpful Feedback Loops

The key is to set up feedback loops where you can gauge reaction or impact and adjust course, when necessary, with relative speed rather than waiting years to adjust.

Government, as we all know, is awful in terms of feedback loops.  Once a law or regulation is finally in place, after commentary, reconsideration, input of special interest groups and the like, the final version often has very different effect than what was intended.  Then along comes our old friend, The Doctrine of Unintended Consequences, where real world consequences of decisions and laws turn out to be different than what was initially anticipated or expected.

For example, the Americans with Disabilities Act has a couple of positive and negative unintended consequences.  With the increase in the number of ramps available for wheelchair access to buildings, parents with strollers, delivery men and others have easier access than ever before as well.  The negative consequences come from some folks using the law as a way to do “drive-by” lawsuits for businesses without adequate disabled parking, even for businesses they have never even attempted to visit.

Yet every law, negotiated and put into place to try to solve real world problems will sit, with its good and bad effects.  It will take forever to change it, with yet more compromises, to make sure it works better than it did at the outset. Because of the delay between enactment and action, the legal process moves at a pace that is frustrating and ridiculous at almost all levels, and this lack of responsiveness is part of the underlying frustration we all have with government at all levels.  The feedback loops, from election cycles to implementation of actual laws is so long, it can seem to render the modification moot.

But government is gradually getting with the program.  The State of Delaware has been using Twitter to help keep people informed of road closures and emergencies They also listen to social channels, so they know where there might be an emergency, a snow removal problem, or other issue the State and its employees can address, rather than waiting to hear through more formal channels.  It makes the State gradually more responsive to citizens, especially where it counts- on day to day issues that effect everyone.

Education Feedback Loops

When I was in school, our teacher figured out what we knew by testing us at the end of a unit or chapter.  we might have had a quiz or paper in between.  These data points are pretty far apart, and don’t help a teacher or student assess what they understand or don’t understand when something can be done about it- closer to the point of first learning.  Educators are using simple things like a “thumbs up/thumbs down” to do a quick check on who is following along and who is lost.  They may use “clickers” to take polls and informal assessments even several times during a class period, checking on what kids are getting and what they need more help with along the way.

These immediate feedback loops help keep kids on track, and avoids losing too many kids along the way.  They help a teacher figure out how to adjust her teaching speed to her students, and keep her from “over-teaching” concepts the kids already know.  The shortened feedback loops help make a teacher and a classroom of students more in sync, making sure each does their jobs better over time. Errors and issues can be spotted and corrected quickly, giving everyone a better shot at mastering the material and doing well.

Tweek Your Feedback Loops

The key in business and education is to keep feedback loops coming, and know when you need to adjust your course of action, and when to hold steady.  If you don’t think your marketing is working, ask your customers what they think of it, sooner than later.  How often would they like to hear from you?  What sort of information would be most helpful?  Do they want sales information, education information, or what would they like to see most?  The more you can gear your materials to your clients needs, the more likely you are to get the response you need.  But like any good feedback loop- you have to remember to ask for the feedback and then act on it appropriately.

feedback loops are the key to getting more out of your current actions- tyr playing with them, and see how they work for your business.

Tonight’s session will give you an overview of the four week course and branding your business with social media.  In addition to the presentation, we’ve developed some great materials as handouts for each class, and together, they will create a bit of a workbook/e-book to accompany the course.

We hope you enjoy the course, and I’d love to hear back from you about what was most helpful, useful, or what you would like to see changed.  Also be sure to let me know if there’s something particular you want to make sure is covered, and we’ll make that happen as well.

Week One Handouts are available as a PDF and you can download them by clicking here:

Branding Your Business – Week One Handouts (PDF)

In No Particular Order:

Fiction

Jen Lancaster.  Jen Lancaster has been a favorite of mine since my friend, beth harte, introduced me to her books a few years ago.  While Jen’s previous books were more life adventure sort of books, If You Were Here is her first fiction novel. Her writing is funny, touching and it has a sense of authenticity to it- It feels like she’s telling these stories to friends over drinks.  Meeting her at a reading in Center City Philadelphia this Spring felt like meeting Bruce Springsteen- it was a big deal for me, especially since I was finishing my own book at the time.  Her previous book- My Fair Lazy, inspired me to take my first trip to Chicago and go to Moto, a molecular gastronomy restaurant that makes you rethink what food can be.  It currently holds my personal record for having spent the most on a meal ever,  and having the most amazing time doing so I could imagine.

The Help- Kathryn Stockett  Yes, I read it, and enjoyed it- and the book is much more in depth than the movie.  I think the only thing missing from this story is the current irony where most of the people in the 50′s and 60′s who were prejudiced and unkind to The Help are now older people, depending on the very people they were abusive to, to take care of them in their old age.  Karma can be a b*tch.

Non-Fiction

The Myth of the Garage- by Chip and Dan Heath.  This book is a collection of great short pieces by the brothers responsible for Made to Stick and Switch- two other books I constantly recommend.  I find myself taking notes about things I want to remember or points to use in my work when trying to explain complex things to people who are a bit scared of all this new online stuff.  Even better, it’s free as an e-book on Kindle, Nook and iBooks.

Dan Ariely Dan’s work helps explain why we all do things that logically don’t make sense and how we can get in our own way.    I love this sort of cultural anthropology, and I’m a huge fan.

What School Leaders Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media- Chris Lehmann & Scott McLeod.  For teachers in the group, Chris Lehmann, the principal of Philadelphia’s Science Leadership Academy, is one of the most thoughtful, kind and amazing people I know.  His book helps you figure out the way forward, as technology becomes more a part of the student’s lives, even if you aren’t 100% comfortable with it yourself.  Time is short, and you need to get with the program as quickly as possible.

Waiter Rant: Thanks for the Tip–Confessions of a Cynical Waiter (P.S.) “>Waiter’s Rant by Steve Dublinica, you’ll end up being a lot more patient and understanding with all the sales clerks you meet.  From a business owner’s point of view, you’ll realize how important your front line personnel are to your overall success or failure.

No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing “>No Bulls**t Social Media- Jason Falls & Erik Deckers.  While I should disclose up front that I consider Jason a friend and someone who I respect highly – and he’s a blast to share a meal with – His book is definitely worth your time, even for those who consider themselves social media savvy.   This is the no-gloss book to recommend to people who are still trying to figure out what this social media thing is about, and why it doesn’t seem to be “working” the same way traditional marketing works.  It contains the conversations all of us in this general social media marketing arena have with each other- it’s about time everyone else knew it, too.  Basic business good sense does not go out the door just because you have a website.

Chuck Klosterman IV- A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas- this is a fun romp from one of the kings of “literary non-fiction”.  Chuck has a bunch of interesting interviews and some of his famous riffs that always make me laugh and walk away totally amazed.

All of Seth Godin’s Domino Project books, including:

Poke The Box- Seth Godin

Do The Work-Steven Pressfield

We are All Weird- Seth Godin

Anything You Want- Derek Sivers

Pick Four (Zig Ziglar workbooks)

Read This Before Our Next meeting- Al Pittamipalli

Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness: The Science, Design, and Engineering of Contagious Ideas- Dan Zarella

End Malaria- Collection of work including amazing people like Mitch Joel, Sir Ken Robinson, Pam Slim, Steven Johnson, and Jeff Jarvis, to name only a few.

Each and every book on this list is worth your time, your attention, your money, and worth sharing with friends.  I’m also excited to say that another friend will be launching a book in this series shortly, and I can’t wait to tell you more about that one- it will change your life.

That’s probably more than the classic top ten, but it should give you a good idea where I’ve spent my time and attention this year, and where I think yours can be well spent as well.

And I have to add this last one:

For any teachers, educators, speakers, parents or other folks interested in education, please check out Chris Brogan, did a video review of the book recently, and it sums up what Jenifer and I were trying to achieve- giving teachers, parents and anyone interested in education a roadmap to how to reach everyone in your audience/classroom, and how to teach with your students in mind.  For me, the best reviews I could get for the work we put into the book is this sort of response- that it made people think, consider, and try something new to better reach their audience.  That’s all an author can ask for in the end.

The classes are structured so that each class can stand alone, but the series creates an overall picture to help you better understand the opportunities available through social channels and how to leverage them for your own business.  The classes are being offerred in three locations and will cover the same material.  In addition, each week we’ll have handouts to go along with the class with resources, online tools to help you and your business, and a list of steps you can take to help implement what we’ve talked about that week.  Our goal is to make sure each week you have something to think about and actionable steps to help make this “social media thing” more manageable and useful to you.

Below you’ll find an outline of the course as planned, and I’d love any suggestions from you about things we may not have added to the list that you’d like to see included.  We’ll also leave a little time at the end of class so you can help get your own questions answered, making sure the class fits your needs as closely as possible.

Course Outline:

Session 1 Branding Online with Social Media
-Why Social Media Matters
-Identifying Your brand and Message
-Overview of the Social Platforms including mobile
-Communicating your brand through your profile

Session 2  Your Customers and Your Community: The Two Way Conversation
-Who do you want to connect to online and why? Inbound and Outbound marketing in a nutshell
-Engaging Your Audience- How to create content they will care about and how to make your messages more memorable
-Setting up listening posts

Session 3 – The Google Tools session: How do customers look for me, and how can I help them find me?
-Google’s Zero Moment of Truth and Customer Feedback Loops- When are customers making decisions and why after the sale is also more important than ever before.
-Basic SEO- understanding tagging, keywords, and trying to fish where the fish are
-Using Google Tools to help time content and check on your competition

Session 4 Managing Social Media and Defining Your Goals
-Integrating Your channels- to cross post or not- making the most of your content.
-Managing Social Media- tools to help make your brand and messaging more consistent
-Defining Success: How do I know if this is working? What am I looking for as far as results?
-Final To Do’s
-Q & A

Locations and Sign-up Links

Flickerwood Wine Cellars- the great wine shop in Kennett Square- 4 consecutive Mondays starting November 28th

http://brandingflickerwood.eventbrite.com/

Lily Sushi- the great new sushi restaurant in Kennett Square- Four consecutive Thursdays starting December 1st

http://brandinglilys.eventbrite.com/

Film Brothers in Wilmington, DE- four consecutive Wednesdays starting December 7th

http://brandingfilmbros.eventbrite.com/

We hope you’ll join us for these sessions.  The price is $80 for the 4 weeks, which comes to $20 per class!  Even if you need to miss a week, I know you’ll find it more than worth it and the handouts will be available to help cover what we covered in class.

I look forward to seeing you there!

Multilevel marketing and Video Email

There’s a “plan” out there I’ve heard a lot about from local business people, called Talk Fusion, that allows you to send Video Email.  It started in 2007, and boasts a large number of people all over the world using this as the next big thing.  The product itself lets you upload videos you create and simply embed them in your email, saying that your email will be much more engaging and “add a new dimension to your business communications.”  (They have other products as well, including video conferencing, video blogging, and more.)

This is intriguing to a lot of business folks, who want to see more results from their emails, bring in new business, and otherwise engage their clients.  This can seem like a great idea, and maybe it is- but you have to ask yourself the following questions:

1. How do I track my current email response rates?  If you aren’t looking at the effectiveness of your current emails, doing A/B testing, finding out when you have the best open rates, etc.  How will you know if any videos you add in will enhance your engagement with email?  Without a good baseline on your current email marketing efforts, how will you compare the addition of video?

2. Am I already using Email marketing best practices?

There are lots of great tips out there for using email marketing effectively. For example, here’s a link to a great post from the Blue Sky Factory Blog detailing 52 fantastic email marketing tips (Blue Sky Factory is now part of What Counts).  If you are going to use email marketing, getting good at that first will deliver much more return than just sending a video in your email will- it’s a whole package of using email to reach your target audience first, let alone engage them with the bels and whistles.  To use an analogy, you can be serving the best (and fanciest) food in town, but if you can’t get anyone to open the door, how will they ever know?

3. How and when/where are my customers receiving my emails?  Many professionals read their email over mobile devices, including iPhones, iPads, Blackberrys, Androids and more.  Only a portion of these platforms support flash players, and the videos in Talk Fusion are all flash-based.  This means all your engaging videos will be invisible to anyone opening up your email on a decent portion of mobile phones and devices, and will defeat the purpose of using this nifty tool in the first place.

3. Do I know anything about creating good videos?

Regardless of what distribution method you use for videos created in house, is the content itself any good?  I recommend you read Content Rules by CC Chapman and Ann Handley, discussing on how to create great and engaging content online first. (Amazon Affiliate link below)  Whether your video is on YouTube or some other online hosting service or part of an email, it should be engaging, informative, and worth the time of anyone who sees it.  Great content is great content, regardless of how you view it.  But “great” will be in the eye of the viewer, so keep that in mind.

Talk Fusion’s Website   

Interestingly, if you go to the Talk Fusion website, it’s as much about the process of signing up to distribute Talk Fusion as it is about the product(s) themselves.  Google Searches for reviews of Talk Fusion lead you to reviews of it as a business opportunity rather than as a service you might want to buy and use in your business.  This raised a red flag for me.  Many of the reviews themselves on various MLM websites are also next to identical.  This makes them all appear to be canned, copy and paste jobs, than authentic,useful reviews.  This has worked well in generating SEO for reviews of Talk Fusion as a MLM thing, but again, gives us no idea what the “users” think about this solution for video email over, say, creating a YouTube channel and putting links in your email, etc.  Nor does it give you any sense of whether or not video in email enhances conversions or business.

When you google Talk Fusion User Reviews you get many of the same results, but right under the video link, you get this:

This would lead me to suspect that there are many folks who are concerned that this MLM plan is more of a pyramid scheme than a really useful business tool, especially since the reviews of “users” are again, geared towards those using Talk Fusion as a personal business opportunity, selling the service, than as end users using it to boost their businesses.

Ok, well this makes me suspicious of Talk Fusion’s business model, but the question that’s still unanswered is whether video email is a good idea or not.

Let’s try to answer that.  Back to Google.  Let’s start with Video Email Marketing Tips.

Benchmark has a great post detailing video email tips and practices.  As we said before, it starts out with basic good email marketing practices.  One key paragraph says:

Overall, video email marketing is untested waters at the moment, but the format is interesting and can open up many opportunities to make new sales and raise interest in your products and services. The key is to start small and not be discouraged if you get less subscribers than you’d hoped for. In time video email may be the standard format, but for now you’ll need to enhance your regular emails with video to help your subscribers make an easy transition over to this new style of email marketing.

So it seems that at least one provider states this is new and untested.  Hrmmm.  The rest of the tips from our Google search all come from, no surprise, email marketing companies, but none of the ones in the first page are Talk Fusion.  That gives me the impression that Talk Fusion is more about selling itself than seeing people be successful using the product, but again, that’s only my opinion.

But let’s look under the hood.  Other email companies, like What Counts, also offer video email.  But they use HTML5 encoding rather than Flash, and to the non-geeks, this means the video is viewable on any device, including mobile, something the flash-based Talk Fusion doesn’t offer.

Conclusions

I haven’t used Talk Fusion myself, but I’m suspicious of the way the company operates more to promote itself than its actual products.  I’m cautious about the results delivered by video email, especially if you don’t already have great email marketing practices to begin with, which would limit the effectiveness of any email campaign, video included or not.  It seems like a shiny object.  Cool, but what’s the real return on investment for your business?  Maybe being seen as cool and cutting edge is part of the appeal, but the results will, again, depend on the quality of the video you produce, not the distribution channel alone.

Even the on-site hosting of your videos on the Talk Fusion “wall” seems to me to generate more traffic for Talk Fusion, not your own website, and does not allow the same sort of sharing that you might find via free services like YouTube.  (Note: Some folks don’t like YouTube and recommend you create your own “branded” video player, but I would suggest getting your content out and shared is more important for most small businesses than worrying about paying money to create a branded player first.  After all, social media and video is about sharing and making distribution simple, not more difficult.)

I’d recommend starting out with creating killer content.  The better your content, in video, audio , emails, blogs, etc., the more naturally people will want to share it and spread your message.  And in the end, whether you are marketing widgets, or trying to teach kids history, the more memorable and engaging your content, the more likely it is that your audience will respond.

And that’s true regardless of the package you wrap it up in.

This is true for me as well.  I have my own consulting business, helping local businesses learn and use digital and social media, and I have my book to promote.  I sit on committees for our school district, teach Podcasting once as week at the Middle School, and moderate a group on Edutopia on personalized learning.  I help organize Podcamps.  I wear lots of hats, with a focus on digital and social media, and education. I do hope some of these volunteer positions will generate clients, but my first focus is making a difference in my community.  I can do this, because my spouse has the “full time gig” which means my income is our “extras” money, going towards long term goals and acting as gap-filler in our personal household economy.

The problem with having multiple gigs, paid or unpaid, is giving each one the attention it deserves, where focus on one or two core things would be better.  While my big picture focus is clear, the day to day “What needs my attention now” can get a bit cloudy, and it takes a lot of effort to remain focused on articulated goals.  I think this is a problem for almost everyone participating in the Gig Economy- how much of your attention and passion are you using for each of these part-time things?  Is any one “good enough” to become a full time, single focus venture?  Do you want one focus? What happens if any one of these gigs dries up, or requires additional focus- how does your juggling act change?

It seems promising- Should I leave a job for the Gig Economy?

I often hear friends talk about the glamorous world of public speaking.  How can they make money by sharing what they know with others?  One woman was thinking about leaving a successful law practice, because she had a speaking gig that paid her a few thousand dollars.  She started to think that if she could do a couple of these a month, she’s have it made, and be able to spend more time at home with her kids as well.

Potential Hiccups in a Great Goal

The potential problem with this idea is the following:

In order to make this business plan work, she would have to make sure (Minimum) she booked paying speaking gigs equal to the money she needed for her family every month.  Who is going to pay her that much, month in and month out?

-While she may be well-known locally, how many times could she give the same speech or even a new one, to these same folks, for the same money every month? Or every year?

- This would mean expanding her market to reach folks she didn’t know as well, and who didin’t know her.  This means spending time networking and connecting to others, to build her reputation.  It also means setting up a business entity, website and more, which are going to require an initial investment of capital.

-She wasn’t a famed law professor, or have any other “product” like books, or coaching, or other “stuff” to push to help generate additional income and up-sell people attending her presentations.  This means she was currently limited to whatever each organization was willing to pay her, and many organizations also have tight budgets.  This makes setting up a stream of guaranteed income producing gigs, month in and month out for the foreseeable future might not be as easy as this first gig made it seem.

-If she had to expand her reach, she would need to travel out of the area.  Paying or receiving compensation for the travel might lower the speaking fee she received as well.

-Additional travel and preparation for these gigs might actually take time away from her family, not give her more time.

-She would have to generate additional income to pay for things like health insurance, professional license fees and other things currently covered by her employer.

This doesn’t mean becoming a public speaker is impossible, or ill-advised.  It just comes with its ups and downs as much as any other business.  Starting out, the speaking can generate a nice side bonus-income, but until gigs get so numerous and/or lucrative that they start either effecting the main job or generate enough income every month to justify making that choice, the speaking business is really more of a nice bonus side business, not a full-time venture, no matter how terrific it seemed at first.

The Side Gig Economy

There are plenty of folks with side gigs- and there always have been.  This includes everything from selling Avon, Mary Kay, Tupperware or any other “representative” and Sell to Your Friends in Your Spare Time kind of things.  I know many teachers, parents, and other folks who sell this stuff on the side, to generate side income. Many of these programs sell things you and your friends might like, but you can only tap that resource every so often before you become a social pariah.  I have sought some of them out when I want something from Pampered Chef, for example, but I will NEVER go to another Partylight candle party, no matter how much I love you- and the number of these candles at the local Good Will would seem to indicate I am not alone in this feeling.

This sort of side gig is meant to be a side gig and uses the leverage of your social relationships the same way the social web does, in order to spur purchases.  But think what you would have to do and the number of strangers you would need to meet and sell to in order to generate a full time income from this.  These organizations are fairly benign multi-level marketing programs, where a few people at the top get very rich, but most people make at best a modest income.

Multilevel marketing plans are all about generating income for folks further up the scale, and trying to get you to develop more people downstream from you, to help you move up the ranks.  It is a game where you have to pressure people to join as representatives, and each person is then told their success or failure is determined not by the product itself, but how hard you are willing to work to pressure more people to join and sell this way.  It works well for a few folks, but often produces no more than side-gig money and an excuse to get friends together for everyone else.

Multilevel marketing is now entering the digital space with a vengeance, and I’ll be writing more about that shortly.

What do you think about the new gig economy?  What are its benefits and burdens?  s this the way all jobs are going- where everyone is a hired gun and a consultant?  What are the overall social benefits and burdens of this?  Let’s talk about this more.

Now, as I’m driving down the road, I think how many times I could be getting other things done, make audio memos, and the like, while having Siri there to help. The fact that Siri has a bit of an attitude only makes me want to use this tech more. It’s like having a helpful but snarky friend with you- wait, isn’t that why I have teenagers?

This has been going on for a long time…

Back when I was in middle school, using an Apple II, I spent a ridiculously long time programming an interactive psychologist program called “Eliza” into the computer. There were books of code in basic, and you could essentially type these into the machine and re-create programs, for free. Eliza was one of them. Yet even though I knew all of her responses and a few that I added on my own, having the computer interact to your comments and suggestions seemed just a little magical. It was like Twitter in some ways- ask a question or make a silly statement, and you get a one line, snarky response back. What’s not to love?

Now Eliza can talk back, orally, with Siri.

This made me think that what we’re really doing here is falling in love with our gadgets. We’re making emotional attachments, and they’re even stronger when the gadget can respond to you as a human. There’s a great article from the New York Times last summer about folks who fall in love with their GPS voice
- and that this isn’t uncommon. One of the best passages was:

Dr. Nass’s research shows that humans respond to machines as we respond to human beings. We talk back to them, get angry at them. But men and women respond to machines differently. Dr. Nass conducted a study of people playing automated blackjack in which the dealer had the ability to express happiness when the player won and sadness when the player lost. The dealer could also express those feelings for itself.

“Here’s the great result,” Dr. Nass said. “Women like it best when the dealer cares about both parties, or neither. They want a relationship with the machine. But the men like it best when the machine cares only about them. When women hear this, they say, ‘Duh!’ ”

This research helps explain my attachment to my GPS. Unlike my wife, my GPS voice is completely subservient. She gives me something I want and doesn’t ask anything in return. All I have to do is plug her in every now and then and she’s happy.

Siri just helps us along a path where we’re already programmed by nature to go- to have a social relationship with the things we interact with. We want to have someone take care of us- like the GPS while driving at night- and then not, when she’s becoming a nag and you know there’s a more efficient way to get across town. It’s like having a mother/best friend/girlfriend you can turn off when you want to- something I don’t think many of us could try in real life, and certainly not over the Thanksgiving dinner table.

That’s probably the reason why some products succeed and some don’t- the ones that help us, are reliable, and then get out of the way and let us go on about our business- these products encourage and thrive with emotional attachment, while others – the ones we struggle to make work- don’t.   Notice how Apple has people literally falling in love and anthropomorphizing almost everything they make, but I’ve never heard of anyone falling in love with their Zune or their PC in quite the same way.  That’s not to take sides in the Mac vs. PC wars, but just to say that PC’s don’t thrive on affection and attachment- they are more like hammers- there to get the job done, where Macs seem to inspire more feelings, for a number of reasons.

And if you still doubt that interactivity is fundamentally changing the way we feel about gadgets, look at this video about a one year old and a magazine versus an iPad:

And this one of Morris Lessmore, a new interactive book app:

The game has changed again, my friends. The future is all about emotions, interactivity and delight.

And as a special treat for those with a sense of =ironic humor….

(For my kids and their love of Portal, watch the Gladios/Siri video below)