Digital Mercenaries in the Wireless War

Posted on December 16, 2009 Written by 8 Comments
death-star-att

Where to begin?

Maybe with my admission that I’ve been a sucker, and odds are if you’re honest you’ll admit you’ve been one too.

death-star-attCongratulations go to Verizon, for waging one of the most effective marketing/advertising/PR campaigns in recent memory. No, not for the Droid, but rather its successful effort to paint AT&T as some Death Star villain. It’s been years in the making, and in the process many of us have been assimilated into Wireless Tribes who do the dirty work.

The part that amazes me is no one is trying to connect dots, or trace paths of influence. There is a veritable army of people on the internet who will Tweet, Re-tweet, Digg and Share any link that refers to wireless wars. No one has questioned the supposed groundswell of Verizon Love that seems to exist, and here is why I have my suspicions:

We’ve been made to care about a distinction without a difference. The surveys indicate that when it comes to dropped calls or customer satisfaction, we’re looking at a hair’s breadth at most. A hair is enough to claim #1, but the truth is that coverage gaps and complaints vary wildly by market.

maps-for-thatWe’re comparing plastic apples to rubber oranges. Verizon is very proud of its 3G map, and is quite happy letting you think that “3G” is a universal standard. Verizon’s 3G is not nearly as fast, and does not allow for simultaneous voice and data. When you drop off AT&T’s 3G, you switch to an EDGE network that is just 20-percent slower than Verizon’s best offering.

Sure, Verizon’s map comparison looks fabulous, but when you factor where people use phones the most, you’re likely to have a faster and better experience with AT&T.

Somehow, most of the thought-leading tech writers seem to revel in the notion that AT&T is some evil empire — as though Verizon is some daisy-sniffing non-profit Mom-and-Pop that does things the old-fashioned way, like Ole Graham Bell intended.

Please. The dichotomy is apparent.

Eye of the Beholder

Truth is your own customer service experience is going to be your most influential factor. I’ve had great service with AT&T, but I never would have left T-Mobile if it hadn’t been for a bad personal experience. The network plays a role, but how you’re treated is huge.

Which gets me back to the Tribes. The greatest sucker-bait in the whole game is getting us at each other’s throats about the phones we use. The iPhone people, the Android Army, Palm Partisans, and the Windows Mobile folks who catch it on all sides.

Truth is, I really like my phone. I picked it because it does the things I need it to do, and does them well. I’m sure many of you feel the same way.

Now, imagine how angry you’d feel if you ditched something you’re otherwise happy with, and switched to something that wasn’t as advertised.

The “conventional wisdom” that AT&T sucks and that Verizon rescues puppies is too one-sided for me to believe it’s genuine and universal.

DISCLAIMER: I am in no way compensated by AT&T, nor have I ever been. I am on a rate plan that I was eligible for through a previous employer, and have never had a deal or offer that wasn’t publicly available to others similarly situated.

I don’t know how many others can say the same.

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Eleven Words Guaranteed To Generate Killer Search Engine Traffic and Clicks

Posted on December 7, 2009 Written by 33 Comments
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Smoke Gets In the Apple of Your Eye

Posted on November 24, 2009 Written by 4 Comments

Smoking Near Apple Computers Creates Biohazard, Voids Warranty

By Laura Northrup on November 20, 2009 6:00 PM 138390 views

Unless you’ve just arrived in 2009 on a time machine, you know that smoking isn’t good for you. Did you know, that smoking isn’t good for your computer, either? It’s true, at least according to Apple. Two readers in different parts of the country claim that their Applecare warranties were voided due to secondhand smoke. Both readers appealed their cases up to the office of God Steve Jobs himself. Both lost.

Back in April, Derek copied us on his e-mail to Jobs:

“I took my mid 2007 apple macbook (black) into the Jordan Creek Apple Store in West Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday, April 25th, because I had been experiencing some issues with it overheating, and figured the fan was bad. After some initial testing, they took the computer in for work under my Applecare plan, which has over a year remaining on it.

Today, April, 28, 2008, the Apple store called and informed me that due to the computer having been used in a house where there was smoking, that has voided the warranty and they refuse to work on the machine, due to “health risks of second hand smoke”.

Not only is this faulty science, attributing non smoking residue to second hand smoke, on Chad’s part, no where in your applecare terms of service can I find anything mentioning being used in a smoking environment as voiding the warranty.”

I know how to fix this.

People who want to buy a MacBook or an iPhone should gather the required cash and place it in an area where it can absorb significant quantities of second-hand smoke.

Then, document the use of that cash as being a part of your purchase.

See if Apple’s policy will void the transaction.

(I wonder if anyone has told Apple that 90% of U.S. currency contains traces of cocaine…)

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Unearned Legacies

Posted on November 20, 2009 Written by 4 Comments
classof1987

Yesterday, I pointed out how Facebook’s automated attempts at peppering me with relevant information had the unintended consequence of creating a virtual seance – connecting with the dead. I don’t really blame Facebook per se, because no one has yet filed to archive Scott’s wall as a memorial account. However, there are still major gaps on the road to real relevance that will be critical for communication and networking, and the team that figures out the right algorithm for relevance will have the juice to dethrone anyone. This means you, Google and Facebook.

classof1987At issue is a simple invitation to related to my high school, that appeared within the ad stream:

Look up high school profiles from the Class of 1987 now. Reconnect with old friends from the Class of 1987 today.

Apparently, the ad server pulls information from my profile with regards to my birth date, but somehow ignores the actual graduation year listed in my Education section.

Yes, I am picking nits, but if you (as Facebook or as an advertiser therein) are trying to feign a personal touch, then get it right.

matrixmorpheus1Relevance is the missing link to the next age of the internet, because automated relevance that works takes social networks away from being an appliance that you actively engage, and into a passive extension of your intelligence. No, this isn’t Neo wiring into the Matrix, but it’s the serving of the information that you wanted before you knew it existed to want.

There are others exploring this space. Facebook has the most eyeballs attuned to the News Feed experiment, where the most popular and clicked items in your feed bubble to the top. As Peter Shankman likes to say, however, it ought to be populated with the people I am most connected to now, not with people who are popular but irrelevant to me today. (I would venture to guess that Peter is less than happy with the results he sees.)

AideRSS tries to attack relevance through PostRank, and algorithm that grades and pulls the very best of a feed. But that is only the best as rated by others, not by your tastes and discrimination.

Google Reader recently added a setting to Sort by Magic, which takes into account new items from the feeds you click on the most, or click on earlier in browsing sessions.

There’s a lot to consider in getting it right, and a number of approaches to the recipe. As there should be, because whoever plants that flag first stands a great chance of locking down the market for several years (or getting bought out handsomely by deeper pockets.)

But I won’t believe there are enough people working on it until I see invitations to connect with classmates who graduated with me in 1986.

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SEO for HR

Posted on November 18, 2009 Written by 7 Comments
job-hunt

job-huntI was talking with a friend who is in the middle of a job hunt, and he was reflecting on the wide variation in advice he’s been given. Several professionals and “headhunt consultants” reworked his resume multiple times, leaving him with a document that an ideal 1-3 pages, while being completely professional and casual, and all topics are covered in narrative style complete with ‘hierarchical’ bullet points.

In other words, he got a whole lot of opinion, and very little useful direction. Even old adages such as “It’s not what you know but who you know” are getting debunked now.

My friend has decades of experience in television, and knows of a couple openings at Fox News Channel, where he happens to “know people.” Despite the advice of his job gurus, the people at the network said “Don’t bother with a paper resume. Nobody reads them.”

This is true. Most big companies don’t bother with paper anymore, but not for the reason you think. They can sort and slice and dice the entries, and bring up only the ones that have certain key words. “Managerial” might be an important word, and “budget” would be another. It’s a smart way to get to the best candidates, but it brings a whole new set of questions to the mix.

The Machine Readable Resume

First of all, once SEO becomes mainstream in the resume business, then you’re going to see even more spammy buzzwords injected into narratives just to get notice. (It’s a great way to “leverage” the system, by showing how you can “optimize” “dynamic” situations, and “shepherd” the “results” that lead to “actionable” “success.”) This will be a wash, because we’ll just replace one set of contradictory consultants with another set. The replacements, with experience in SEO, will at least have data on their side. Allegedly.

The larger issue for me is that we end up devaluing a skill there’s precious little of to begin with: writing.

Even companies where communication is the livelihood will tell you there aren’t enough good communicators. You can’t calculate the loss of productivity that occurs when people dress things up in formal-sounding language, for no good reason. Or the clear and concise reports that mysteriously balloon from a single page to five pages, just to make it look more important.

Sure, there are safeguards built into the hiring process. The unqualified and the intolerable don’t survive very well in the interview, but good candidates get shut out more often than you would think. I have another friend who is in a hiring capacity, and she has a constant struggle with HR and recruitment. When she has job openings, she tells her ideal candidates about it expecting them to make the cut, yet HR will forward a batch of screened resumes that don’t include no-brainer obvious candidates. She is able to use this information, over time, to calibrate what she asks for, but this becomes more energy wasted on cat-and-mouse games.

The paper resume is dead, and my observations to the contrary it’s not coming back for one simple reason:

When you apply online, they can force you to fill out the Salary Requirement field. Those left blank get kicked back to the applicant. You might have the perfect qualifications, education, experience and moxie – but if you’re a few dollars over the budgeted ceiling, you’ll never get the interview, no matter what you’re worth.

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Failures in Self Promotion

Posted on November 5, 2009 Written by 20 Comments

Update:

There is no need for further linking, nor humiliation. Matthew has stepped up, and has eloquently apologized for acting upon bad advice.

The links have been removed, and the page redacted to be more representative of Mr. Duggan’s position and stance. (That’s not to say there aren’t weasels out there continuing to advocate for spammy tactics, but armed with new knowledge I am confident that Mr. Duggan will be a much better example of best practices going forward.)

We all enjoy feedback and comments. Well, at least the ones that are genuine.

When they are not genuine, be prepared. Especially when you try to game me.

This means you, Matthew Duggan.

I got the following comments from Matthew:

Very interesting. It’s good to hear the thoughts of an experienced media expert on a new media like Twitter.
The ‘community’ aspect is a very good idea and tools like TwitterFall are good for regional searches.

Posted on my Twitter Policy page.

Incredible! Those statistics are quite amazing.
Congratulations on the way you use Twitter Ike and on your induction into the Twitter Elite!

Posted on Global Dominance

Now, Matthew Duggan (matthew@buildyourfollowers.com) happens to run a site called BuildYourFollowers.com, and signs his comments with the very search-engine friendly name of “Twitter for Business.” Which means that he wants as many web pages as possible to associate the phrase “Twitter for Business” with his site.

Let’s just see what kind of site this Fake Twitter Guru runs, shall we?

‘9 Free Videos, 6 Free e-Book Chapters and an Exclusive Members Area Reveal How To Automate Twitter and Transform It Into A Marketing Machine For Your Business…. Even If You’ve Never Used Twitter Before’

Fake Twitter Guru, indeed. But wait… there’s MORE!

You’re about to learn little known tools and techniques to transform Twitter into a free and automatic way of generating targeted leads to your website and grow your business. All with little effort and no knowledge.

And I’m giving away part of the course plus another $97.00 in value just so I can show you that this works!

Yes I’m literally going to bribe you just to get you to give me your name and e-mail.

Why would I do that?

Well I know that the only way for me to show you who I am and to demonstrate the value I can add to your online business life is by the 2 of us getting acquainted, and in the online world the medium we use to stay in touch with each other is the e-mail address (here’s mine – matthew@buildyourfollowers.com)

BUT

There is A LOT of garbage out there, and because of this I know that I’m genuinely competing for your time.

So

I’ve decided to do the only smart thing that makes solid business sense. By offering you a 7-part course for free that’s filled with top quality training, I’m hoping that 2 things will happen:

1. You’ll get to know, like and trust me.

2. Later on when I’ve demonstrated my value to you by helping you get started you’ll possibly invest in my full e-book and video course on Twitter.

That’s the truth.

Others will tell you all sorts of BS but that’s what’s really happening.

In the free course, I’ll show you how to:

  • Promote Your Business Automatically
  • Maximise Your Twitter Profile like a Social Media Pro
  • Show you a strategy that got me 1500 targeted followers in 2 and a half months
  • PLUS: My free strategy for using little known methods to Maximise Your Business

This way you have zero risk and the onus is on me to impress you… which is, as it should be.

So shall we get started?

SEO is a two-way street

I know what you are saying. “Ike, this guy is a loser, and you’re just giving him free publicity and the link-love that will help him game the search engines.”

I would have just left this one alone and deleted the obviously spammy comments, but there were two things I could not leave alone:

  1. He didn’t even bother to read the posts he was linking to. For instance, the “Global Dominance” piece was written last year to mock another Matthew, who trumpeted his own dominance of Twitter. I showed how easy it was to game the system to become the Number One Twitter User on Planet Earth. Apparently, Fake Twitter Guru Matthew Duggan was too quick to post his spammy comment on my site to realize his overly-fawning comment was a joke (and a damned fine one, at that.)
  2. Fake Twitter Guru Matthew Duggan – in the process of posting spammy comments on my site – actually links people to this:

    SPAM Image

    You think that

    YOU hate Spam?

    (Try running an

    internet business!)

    I personally detest Spam and PROMISE that you will NEVER get an unwanted email as a result of signing up here.

Please help me make Matthew Duggan #1 in Google!

I am a firm believer in Search Engine Optimization techniques, but I am not a fan of being a shameless spammer like Fake Twitter Guru Matthew Duggan. So let’s show Fake Twitter Guru Matthew Duggan how SEO is done right.

If everyone uses the words Fake Twitter Guru as the anchor text linking to his site, then we can make him Number One with a bullet!

Please share the good news about Fake Twitter Guru Matthew Duggan with as many sites as you can, and be sure to share this entry with your friends! Get them to help too! (There are a number of icons below to make it easy. Bookmark it! Digg it! Tweet it!)

Let people like Fake Twitter Guru Matthew Duggan know that their Neanderthal nascent understanding of marketing is sleazy unwelcome and won’t be tolerated in a polite society. The business you save from getting suckered by his shenanigans might be your own.

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More Thinking Social

Posted on October 15, 2009 Written by 13 Comments

Yesterday, I shared some ideas about how cable and satellite companies could not only enhance user experience through their DVRs, but could generate significant revenue and affiliate streams by incorporating more Thinking Social into their software.

I promised another idea today.

Sonic Boom

The second idea is more specific, and revolves around the current campaign for Sonic. The premise for the ads is simple, based on meaningless front-seat conversations in the drive-through.

(Aren’t you glad I had auto-start turned off?)

The commercials work because they walk that fine line between the real and the surreal. It’s a situation we’ve all been in, and I’m pretty sure that my conversations with my wife and my brother have been no less alternate-universe.

So, here’s the opportunity for Sonic to step up with being Social.

Invite people to send in their own 20-second clips. Do it as an online audition. Let people vote. Then put as many of the ads to work as you can:

  • The winning ad gets added to the television rotation nationwide
  • Regional winners would be run on the air within their own hometowns
  • Local spots that meet the standard would be run on the web.

Obviously, you’d vet the spots to make sure there was no hidden nudity, and no one throwing in gestures for “shock value.”

How exactly would those local spots work again?

Run them online. Run them on Facebook, targeted to specific cities. Run them inside your friend’s list on Facebook. It’s not as intrusive as those ads that associate your picture with a product without explicit permission – this is a clear case of consent. (No one goes to the trouble of putting together a :20 video, with all the editing involved, on a particular topic, and submitting it through a portal and then gets shocked when it is used.)

Put the rest on a branded YouTube channel, and let people watch themselves over and over, all the while reinforcing your delicious tater tots.

The opportunities are there. You don’t even have to be good at Food Math.

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